


Up Ahead (the roads were closed)

by Rahmi



Series: Secure the Blessing [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Brothers, Dysfunctional Family, Gen, Happy Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-02-19
Updated: 2007-02-19
Packaged: 2017-11-28 08:25:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 49,878
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/672311
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rahmi/pseuds/Rahmi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam and Dean deal with their new family when demons come calling.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Up Ahead (the roads were closed)

**Author's Note:**

> Written for NaNoWriMo in 2007. It's a very rough story because of the NaNo thing and I've never much felt like cleaning it up. Most of the spelling mistakes should be caught at this pint, but if you see something that is absolutely driving you nuts, feel free to leave a comment correcting it.
> 
> The ending is kind of just... there, sorry.

Sam's got some weird mannerisms. For a long time, Dean'd been totally wrapped up in being not crazy, but after a while? Yeah, he'd noticed that Sam does weird things now.

For one thing, Sam has a tendency to fondle his car. It's sort of disturbing to see and he always has this vague urge to slap Sam's hands away and declare that the Impala is his, damnit. For another? Sam does hokey things with his head or his hands, or hell, even his legs now, putting them in weird places when he talks or just... he sleeps weird now too.

Usually, well, usually as in before this whole mess of a wish happened, but whatever, it's usually for him even if it's something on twenty-two years ago. Anyway, usually, sleeping with Sam is kind of like sleeping with a limpet. There's clutching and clinging and uncomfortable drooly spots on his shirts, snuffling noises, and, hey, just for fun, sometimes there's even flailing limbs and nightmares.

That's what he remembers, anyway.

Nowadays, when he's forced to bunk down with Sam in the Impala (which happens less frequently than it did in that other lifetime, mainly because Sam's perfectly willing to hustle pool now that he hasn't had someone else to spoil him), there's still drool. Sammy drool is apparently his gross constant in life. But Sam tends to curl up into himself instead of into Dean, spine a bony curve against Dean's arm or his leg instead of lodged into his chest, and it's just _weird_.

He really hates what that implies and, because he's not a little girl like Sam is, he doesn't think about it all that often.

See, he can remember every single one of Sam's weird, frequently girlie, motions. The way he walked, the way he talked, the way he tilted his head to the side when he was confused; all of it. He should. Every single thing the Sam in his memories had done was stolen from either him or Dad.

There's not a motion he can't place. Or, at least, there shouldn't be.

He's having a hard time connecting the Sam he's got here to the Sam he's got in his head. Stupid, but true. Also, freakin' obnoxious.

Like, he'll look over at Sam, expecting to see a certain hitch to his shoulders, the characteristic way Sam'd curl into himself to look smaller, and instead he'll get straight shoulders and a loose posture, like this Sam (who's still his Sammy, goddamnit, no matter what) never learned to need to be smaller or never felt too big for his skin. He hasn't asked about it, but it throws Sam's entire body language way the hell off.

It's friggin' hard to read his brother now, and it should be easier than loading a shotgun.

Right now? He can't tell whether Sam's telling him that he thinks their Miss Anastasia (fat, newly widowed, and wearing something Dean doesn't even like seeing on skinny chicks) is lying horrendously about her husband's death which, yeah, he's not dumb, Sammy, or if Sam's just trying not to scratch an embarrassing itch.

He's just about ready to throw his disgusting, weird-ass tea concoction at Sam's stupid face just so he'll make a face he can understand. Bitchface? Always universal.

That is, of course, when Anastasia leans over to afford the both of to wipe her suspiciously crocodile-like tears on the laciest, ugliest handkerchief Dean's ever seen. And when Anastasia leans over, her entire body starts this slow, agonizing glide that Dean can't take his eyes off of. No matter how badly he wishes he could gouge them out with his stirring spoon.

It's only when he sees something that might be a hint of nipple that his brain kicks into gear and his head whips around to stare at the nice, safe, wonderful tear in Sam's jacket. Well, his jacket, he realizes a moment later, recognizing the tear from that little bitch Maggie.

It keeps striking' him how freakin' ludicrous this all is. Sam's smaller than him again, snagging his shirts, sweaters, jackets, pants, and, hell, shoes, without so much as a second thought. They both know he'll be wider and taller than Dean, oh, sometime before June of 2001 (because, let's face it, if there is a higher power? It hates Dean), but in the meantime, they've reverted to Winchester style.

Dad had bought them one wardrobe for years; they'd just handed off clothes like the freakin' baton in a race, which meant that Dean always looked like he was waitin' for the floods to come and Sam had a head start on that whole retarded baggy pants thing that kids nowadays were doing. At least until that last six months, were Dad finally had to admit defeat in regards to Sam's ginormous Godzilla height and Dean was raking in enough extra cash to splurge on separate wardrobes.

He focuses on that, trying to keep his horrified mind away from the woman's boobs. She doesn't even seem to notice, he realizes in horror. She's still leaning over, bending down further and further, and Dean gets a full on view of everything as it tumbles right the fuck out.

The last time he'd been this willing to stab out his own eyes, there'd been a supernatural monster involved.

Sam jabs an elbow into his side.

He narrows his eyes back at Sam. "Dude," he mouths when Anastasia looks away from them both to tuck her boobs back into her top, "What?" Sam seriously couldn't think that he'd been ogling that woman. He has freakin' taste.

Sam rolls his eyes and blows his hair out of his face.

That's the other thing. So much about his brother'd changed, but Sam's got the exact same stupid freakin' haircut he'd sported for ten years back in… whatever. The other reality, he guesses. He doesn't really know what he should call the thirty years he'd lived before the current twenty-two.

When Anastasia looks back up from her tits, Dean slides a fake smile her way, drains his tea-stuff, and asks for more.

She flutters off happily, babbling about how her tea brings all the boys to the yard, and Dean literally flinches as soon as her backs turned. Sam ducks his head to hide a smile, but Dean doesn't even care.

He pulls a face at his empty glass. Not only is the tea a syrupy mess, but, shit, he recognized that line. Okay, a little modified, but, still.

He'd been hoping some of that crap hadn't made it back into the music industry. Was it too much to ask for that Metallica and Motorhead dominated the music charts for decades? Really, he didn't ask for much. He can't stand new music. Especially when he's had to listen to the "new" shit twice in one (two? Fuck it) life times.

"You look constipated," Sam mutters.

"My tea brings all the boys to the yard," Dean repeats flatly. "Man, are we freakin' done yet? We both know she offed the guy for his life insurance."

His brother's face twitches into a grimace. "Could have been an angry spirit. Or witchcraft. There's a million things that could have done this, Dean."

Dean slashes a hand through the air before Sam can go any farther. Yeah, it could have been witchcraft or a spirit, or a million different other things that go bump in the daylight and leave a healthy man dead on his kitchen floor. Or it could be the wife.

Sam twists his lips and the muscle in his jaw ticks once, but he doesn't try to argue. That hasn't changed either. Sam had always hated it when the monsters turned out to be human.

They ditch the house before Anastasia comes back out of the kitchen. Dean's perfectly willing to go through the window if it means he can leave faster, but Sam just rolls his eyes exasperatedly and motions to the door with a sarcastic hand.

"You're not going out the window," Sam hisses. Dean's always been kind of impressed with the way Sam can hiss words that don't have s-sounds in them, and it's just another random thing that makes him go squishy girlie inside.

Sometimes he swears he feels like one of those G.I. Joe action figures Gayle used to steal and use as Barbies whenever she lost hers. Big bad man with guns on the outside, squishy princess on the inside.

There's a meaningful pause from Sam. Dean turns his head a little to squint at him, wondering what the hell his problem is, and Sam just sort of... stares at him. Dean catches himself patting his shoulder for the extra head he's obviously grown.

"Did you just call yourself a squishy princess?" Sam asks slowly.

He wishes he were living back in that other life right about now, back when he could blame all of Sam's freaky powers on the demon and not genetic lottery like it apparently was.

"Jesus, don't tell me you read minds now too, Sammy," he says tightly. There's not a lot he thinks is sacred from Sam, but, fuck, he wants his thoughts to himself.

Seriously. There's got to be an end to this, sometime, right? He's already mostly cool with Sam's telekinesis, the visions that, thank God, don't hurt anymore, and the ability to burn shit comes in downright handy, especially when they're standing on the lip of a grave and Dean's forgotten his lighter in the car. But mind reading? Nuh-huh.

Tin foil hat, maybe, Dean thinks furiously, and watches Sam blink at him.

"Dude, I'm not reading your mind," Sam says. A slow, beatific smile spreads across his face. "You keep blurting stuff out."

Dean scrunches his eyebrows together. "No I don't."

"Trust me, Dean; I don't have the power to read minds. And I saw your mouth move when you said that you felt like a transvestite doll."

"Action figure," Dean corrects immediately. "I can understand how you'd get those confused; what with you loving My Little Ponies so much; but little boy's toys are called action figures, Sammy."

There's a slight pause again, long enough that Dean has time to think back and realize that, whoops, no, Sam probably didn't play with anything this time around, because he's an old man in a little kid's body. He really hopes that Sam never catches wind of all the tea parties Gayle made him endure (before she decided he sucked ass, anyway).

A second later he's slapping a hand over his mouth, in a very manly way, thank you, hoping to hell he didn't blurt that last part out.

"You don't get a lot of toys when you're a foster," Sam's smiling when he says it, dimples and everything, but Dean still gets a strong surge of, "Motherfuckers, gonna kill them all, Sammy should have had toys," anyway.

Sam raises his eyebrows and stuffs his hands in his pockets, rocking back on his heels. "It wasn't that bad, Dean," he says, and he sounds sort of amused.

You never got slugged by an adult when you grew up with us, Dean thinks peevishly. He opens his mouth to say something about how he'd always made sure Sam had plenty of hair clips and dresses growing up, realizes his mouth is already open, and snaps it shut. He glares at Sam, daring him to comment, and of course, like the little bitch he is, Sam does.

"Dude, I had more black eyes growing up the first time around then I did this time." Sam leans back to look at the door they're standing in front of. "Let it go."

Dean snorts. Let it go. Yeah, right.

Sam ignores that too, bless his enormous stolen socks. "The tea?" he asks. "Did you actually drink it?"

Sam, Dean remembers, had taken one sip of it and then done something that Dean once would have sworn he'd never do; he'd leaned over when Anastasia was busy flaunting her cleavage in Dean's face, dumped the tea in the nearest potted plant, and then sat there, politely holding an empty cup for ten minutes. Dude. That was something he'd pull. Not Sam.

And there went his thoughts back to those weird mannerisms again.

"You stand weird," Dean blurts out, still thinking about it. Hey, he figures he's getting better at this shit. He'd actually known his mouth was open that time, right?

"What?" Sam asks slowly. He scratches his eyebrow as he says it, looking at Dean from underneath his bangs, and Dean leaps on that with a mental sigh of relief. Something familiar.

Then he gets an idea.

"You need to cut your hair," he says deliberately. He's sort of hoping Sam'll take it as a subconscious thought, something that should be listened to because Dean's not just saying it to be annoying, but then Sam crosses his arms and gives him a _look_.

You are so full of shit, that look says, so Dean sighs. "Nothing. Whatever. Truth spell in the tea, remember?"

"Uh-huh," Sam says slowly, like he's figuring something out. Dean twitches. "You just drank about sixteen ounces of truth spell. And now you're babbling about how I _stand weird?_ There's something majorly wrong with your brain, man."

Sam takes a couple of steps back towards the door they'd just come through.

The goddamn tea and that goddamn woman with her big, nasty boobs. Dean winces. "We can just wait for it to wear off, right?" he asks hopefully. "I mean, it's not like she's gonna off some poor bastard after she goes through all the trouble of brewing truth potions, right?"

"Yeah, I guess not," Sam says.

The way he says it, though, Dean knows there's something else coming. He purses his lips and tries not to think about anything in particular, especially not about how much it totally sucked to not have a brother for twenty-two years.

If he says any of that out loud, Sam does him the vague courtesy of pretending he didn't. The suspiciously dewy eyes Sam blinks at him for a few seconds suggest he might have, but hell, Dean's pretty alright with denial, as long as it means no chick flick moments.

Sam clears his throat and looks away. "Ah, anyway, I mean, she'd be pretty pissed if her 'guest' suddenly started blurting out that he thinks she's skanky or something, right?"

"And they'd have a convenient accident like hubby dearest, yeah." Dean scrubs a hand across his face, takes a second to catalogue that particular quirk as being something he'd picked up from Dad, and blows out a breath. "We have to go back in there, don't we?"

He'd rather go after a ghost. Demon, even. Sam doesn't look like he cares.

"I told you she was a witch," Sam says, tone bright and easy. He's got his hand on the doorknob again, ready to lead them back into flowery, widow-filled hell.

Dean reaches out to smack him on the back of his head.

They were so going to see Mom and Dad after this.

* * *

Dean's been back in their lives for something like six months now. Long enough that even Abby's grudgingly decided he's there to stay, in a manner of speaking.

He pops in every week or so, dragging the same shaggy-haired, rail thin "Sammy" behind him every time.

John's hope that _that_ was just a phase dies pretty swiftly. Especially when he remembers just how fixated his son was on finding a "Sammy" for pretty much his entire life. Mary's taken to squealing with glee whenever she hears the Impala pull into the driveway; she's adopted that boy, maybe even likes him better than Dean, though she'd castrate John if she heard him say it.

John's still a little unsure about the kid.

Sam's polite as all hell, nothing but "yes, sir," and "yes, ma'am." He's skinnier than a post and John's got no doubts that Dean could take him in a fair fight, but the kid's still one tall mother-fucker, and, aside from his first name, they don't know a good goddamn thing about him.

So he does what any good, self respectin' man does when faced with his son's mysterious lover.

He hires a private detective to dig up dirt on the little bastard.

He also, like a good, self respectin' man, keeps that little fact from his wife. She's a scary woman when she's crossed, and admitting that he's looking into Sam's past is probably akin to telling her that he thinks her favorite black dress makes her look like a hippo. In other words? Castrated. Again.

John's a little fond of those parts.

"Are you brooding about the boys again?" Mary asks.

She's leaning against his shoulder, sitting on the couch with him after forcing him away from the baseball re-run upstairs. Abby's in the armchair ten feet away, making the occasional gagging noise over old people PDA.

John's not really any happier about it than she was; God knows he really doesn't want to watch this travesty of his boyhood hero with her anymore than she wants him watching it. His wife, on the other hand, thinks that watching some teeny-bopper program is going to make him feel closer to his eighteen year old daughter.

Abby's got a crush on the guy who's playing the wussy version of Clark Kent. John thinks he's too pretty, even if he theoretically approves of her liking a corn-fed, all-American superhero more than he likes her crushing on her brother's boytoy.

Mary keeps elbowing him, hissing to keep his damn opinions to himself.

He can't help but think that he'd prefer it, a little at least, if she'd just taken off like Dean did so he could skip this sullen phase.

Then he thinks about the years of barely knowing if his boy was alive, let alone healthy and happy, and he clobbers that thought to death. He prefers the knowing.

"So, that, um, Clark," John says during the next commercial brake, "He's hot stuff, right?"

"Don't ever say 'hot stuff' again, Dad," Abby mutters. She picks at a run in the chair fabric and scowls in the general direction of the television. John sighs soundlessly, not even reacting when Mary pinches his thigh; he really shouldn't even try.

"What's wrong, sweetie," Mary asks, and that's all it takes for Abby to stop picking and look up at the both of them with troubled eyes. Sometimes, he wants to bash his head against the handy coffee table at how easily his wife gets his children.

Abby doesn't say anything for a second, during which they all listen to adults sing about how they're Toys'R'Us kids. Then, "Dean's coming home soon, isn't he?"

"Yeah," John says, slowly. He's not really sure why his youngest wants to skewer his oldest, but he's learned to be weary of her temper in regards to Dean. "Day after tomorrow."

His daughter bites her lip for a second. That's actually learned from Mary, John knows, and it usually precedes a spectacular screaming fit. He winces and tucks one ear against his wife's blonde hair. He needs to save some of his hearing for his customers.

Mary shoots him a quick, sideways grin before her face smoothes back into a sympathetic, listening expression.

"Why does he keep coming back!" Abby explodes, right as the commercials end and Clark Kent comes back on screen, staring through his telescope at the girl next door. John feebly waves to the television in hopes that it'll quiet her down, but she doesn't even notice.

"He was gone for six years," Abby continues, "Why does he keep coming back now? And bringing that guy with him!"

John bites his tongue. Now is not the time to address Abby's crush on Sam; it's not, he tells himself firmly. Not matter how much he wants to point out that she moons over him just fine when he comes around with Dean.

"This is Dean's home too, Abby," Mary says reasonably. She even goes so far as to smile a little bit, her eyes sad and serious. It's an act, John knows, but a damned good one; he's fallen for her puppy eyes more than once. "What do you expect him to do? Not visit? We'd be heartbroken."

Mary says it like it's a given, and John knows that it is, but Abby crosses her arms stubbornly.

"If his precious _Sammy_ was important enough that he could leave us without saying _anything,_ then he should have stayed gone!" she's almost shouting at the end of that, but her eyes are shining and her voice is choking up.

She's his girl and John aches for her. He wants to hold his baby girl and promise that nobody on earth is ever gonna make her cry; he'd kill any man that tries to tell her otherwise, but the only person to blame for her tears is Dean and he's not ready to kill his boy for being stupid.

"He didn't care enough to stay here or to even tell us he was going, except for a stupid-ass _note,_ and now it's all supposed to be okay with him coming back?" Abby's squinting at the both of them, eyes flicking from the couch to them and back again. "I don't want him here!"

John hadn't known that she remembered anything about Dean's feverish mutterings for a boy that didn't exist. Far as he knew, Dean'd never mentioned his imaginary Sammy to her.

"That's enough," Mary says, quiet as a mouse.

She pushes herself away from John's side while, onscreen, Clark Kent bashfully flirts with Lex Luthor. John can't decide if he should be more horrified by the desecration of his childhood idol, or if he should just slump in his seat to avoid getting in the middle of a girl fight.

He can see Abby's point.

Hell, anyone with half a brain can see that his girl's nothing if not jealous and hurt that the big brother she'd idolized for a good ten years had up and let her without a word. Doesn't mean that John doesn't want to shake her a little, maybe rattle her teeth, and ask if driving her brother away would really make her happy.

Damnit, he missed his son enough to not kick up a fuss when he came home draggin' some shaggy-haired hippy behind him. Abby can put a lid on that anger and deal with it.

Abby's still grumbling under her breath a minute later, nothing but incoherent, stuttered, hurt-fueled rage. John sinks a little further down into the couch and wishes they'd done this somewhere he wouldn't have to watch. He hated watching his daughter cry.

"Young lady, you are on very thin ice," Mary's voice drops down low when she's mad. John finds it endearing, when it's not aimed at him.

Abby crosses her arms a little tighter, huddling miserably and childishly in her chair, and blows out a breath the swings her bangs a good two inches away from her face.

For a second, John thinks that'll be the end of it. Abby's good at holding a grudge, but she hates confrontation, would rather seethe quietly than risk being yelled at or corrected. She'd ended up with the worst of both his and Mary's temperaments, without either of their saving graces; she holds onto her hurts for years, nurses the hell out of them, even, and John's still paying for that time he accidentally used a pink and purple ribbon in her hair and made her the laughingstock of the kindergarten playground.

Dean'd done her hair whenever Mary couldn't from that day on. Of course, that meant she'd never been allowed to wear the blue hair ribbons, because Dean refused to put them in. Just something else for her to hate about her brother, John figures.

Onscreen, Clark does a passable job of inviting Luthor to bend him over the desk.

Across the living room, Abby's lips tighten. "Whatever," she says, "He should just take his fucktoy and go already. We don't need him here."

"Watch your mouth," John says, automatic. She might've been a big bad eighteen in her own book, but that didn't mean she was allowed to mouth off anymore than she could of at eight.

"Sam and Dean are always going to be welcome in this house," Mary says right over his own voice. There's steel in her tone, one of the many reasons he married her, and Abby shrinks back a little from it. "And I'd better not hear you say that again, Abigail."

"Fine," Abby says sullenly.

Yeah, John thinks, the upcoming visit? Was going to be buckets of fun.

The phone rings right as Mary's settling back against his side. John jumps at the chance to excuse himself from, a. Mary and Abby's frigid, time of the month silence, b. the horrifically bad acting ability of the cute, vaguely Asian teenie-bopper on screen, and c. the glare Mary sends his way for apparently moving and rendering himself a lousy pillow.

The cordless is farther away than the regular phone, all the way in the sanctuary of the kitchen, so that's the one John goes for. If it means he has to jog out of the room to get to it before it stops ringing, it's not really retreating.

Mary mouth curls into a half-smile that says he's not fooling anyone, but she doesn't attempt to call him back for some more asinine family bonding torture. He preferred it when he and Abby bonded over a mutual disdain for soccer.

"Yeah?" John asks as soon as he's got the phone.

The person on the other end of the line waits a beat for him to introduce himself. John wedges the phone against his shoulder and picks at some grease stuck under his fingernails. It's his damn house, the person on the other end can damn well introduce themselves first.

"Mr. Winchester?" the person on the line finally asks.

"That'd be me," John answers, pleasantly. It'd better not be a fucking telemarketer.

"This is Richard Wilkins."

John waits out the expectant pause with irritation. He doesn't know a Wilkins.

The man sighs. "You hired me to look into your son's lover?" he prompts.

"Just so you know," John says pleasantly into the phone, "If my wife is listening in on the other phone, you're not going to get paid."

There's a slightly longer pause, while John waits to see if Mary comes barging into the kitchen breathing brimstone and fire and the private detective breathes heavily.

When it becomes obvious that Mary either didn't pick up the phone to eavesdrop (or she was gonna wait until John was sleeping to rip his balls off), the detective breathes out and says, "I got your Sam's real name, and his file, in my office right now."

"Sam's not his real name?"

"Nah. Kid's prints say he's one," there's a slight hesitation, the sound of papers rustling, "James Taylor. Last seen at eleven, exiting his sixth grade classroom to use the bathroom. Missing ever since."

"Jesus," John says, "Sixth grade?" A lot could happen to a sixth grader, an eleven or twelve year old by themselves out in the world. John feels his gut clench at the thought of what could have happened to Dean if he'd been that young when he decided to leave.

He'd thought Dean disappearing at sixteen was hard. The thought of his boy out there at eleven was enough to make him sick to his stomach.

"Yeah. Nothing after that. State looked, couldn't find the kid, put out a missing persons. Nada. Kid just disappeared off the face of the earth," Wilkins makes a frustrated noise. "Your boy is damned hard to follow, by the way. Every time I get within a few miles of where your kid and James are staying, they up and disappear in the middle of the night. I've got nothing concrete on the kid except what's in his file."

The phone creaks in John's hand. He carefully loosens his grip before he accidentally presses the button to put it on speaker phone. "So, you're basically telling me that you're useless," he finally says.

Wilkins sighs. "Look, I've got the state file right here. When can you come down and pick it up? I know you don't want your wife accidentally overhearing this."

"Is he dangerous?" John asks instead of answering the question.

If the kid's not dangerous, he doesn't really want to go digging further. He sure as fuck doesn't want to know why a kid who's name is James is going by the name Sam or how Dean had met up with him. He really, really, really doesn't want to fucking think about how codependent and inot right in the head/i someone has to be to agree to be a stranger's "Sammy."

Another, longer pause, while the papers flip again and the Wilkins hesitates over what he finds. "Only record of violence I have here is against a foster-father in jail on 13 counts of child abuse and one of murder."

"My son's bringing him home the day after tomorrow," John says tightly. He can't digest that right now, can't think about some little kid getting the snot beaten out of him by someone who should have been teaching him to throw fast balls, and he sure as hell isn't gonna tell Mary. "I'll see you after they leave."

"Alright."

* * *

"You ditch your stalker again?" Dean asks as soon as Sam slides into the booth across from him. He's got a pile of salt in the middle of the table, ostensibly to dunk his fries in after they've been drowned in ketchup, but Sam's willing to bet he's gonna get salt thrown at him at some point in the conversation, just to make sure he's not a possessed.

Subtle, Dean's not.

Sam grimaces. "Yeah." He blows out a breath, looks around to make sure nobody's watching, and then yanks two packets of sugar from the table behind Dean. Dean doesn't even blink when the packets come floating by without a hand on them.

Dean, being Dean, just pokes them hard enough that Sam's got to squint to get them back on course before they ram into his eye.

"What's with your number one fan, anyway?"

"Don't know," Sam says. He hooks a finger in the lip of Dean's coffee mug, pulls it towards him, because it's not like Dean hasn't already downed two or three in the amount of time it took Sam to lose his stupidly ridiculous tail. "He's not a demon, anyway."

"Sure?" Dean asks. He narrows his eyes at the finger invading his coffee and reaches out to hit Sam's hand, one of his own steadying the mug so nothing sloshes over the side. "Keep your gigantic mitts off my coffee, Sam."

Sam knows what demons feel like, knows the way they scrape across your skull in weird ways that normal people equate to a sudden passing breeze. Demons aren't oily or slick or anything else that evil's usually described as; they're dry and they rasp like sand across wood. It's disconcerting.

It's doesn't help that whatever's left of the Yellow-Eyed Demon (he refuses to call it Azazel, even if he's known what its name was for eighteen and a half years now) sometimes sits up and takes notice. He'd exorcised a boy two years ago for no reason other than the fact that his guts had gone hot and tight and _glad_ when he'd walked by him.

He hasn't told Dean about that. He doesn't really plan on it, either.

He can just see that conversation. "Hey, Dean, man, you know how I have all those freaky powers? One of them is sensing demons. Oh, but wait, that's not really because of my powers. That's because I've got demon remains floating around my system. That's awesome, right?"

By that point, the little daydream usually descends into Dean tying him up and performing exorcisms until his voice is hoarse. No thanks.

Dean flicks a few grains of salt onto the hand that's still reaching out for his coffee. There's a teasing light in his eyes, something like, "Geez, pay attention, Sammy," but there's also a tightness around his face that shouldn't really be there.

Sam blinks back at him, pursing his lips a little until Dean's eyes relax into the usual teasing smile. Sometimes he hates that Dean thinks he needs to check and see that he's still ihim/i; that his brother can't just look at him and know.

Then he remembers that Dean's not even really his brother anymore and he deflates a little.

"Unless you feel like throwing holy water on him, you're gonna have to take my word for it, Dean," Sam reaches out for the coffee again, curving his hand around the base of the mug, "The guy's human."

"Oh, so he just thinks you're pretty. Gotcha," Dean says. He grabs the handle of his mug, the fingers of his free hand covering the side protectively. "Of course, he's suffering from a head wound or somethin' if he thinks you're the pretty one, but." Dean shrugs a little bit.

Sam tilts his head to get some of the hair out of his eyes and pries Dean's fingers off the mug without even touching him. "Shut up and give me your coffee. I've got a headache."

Dean mutters something under his breath that sounds a lot like he's whining about little brother's always cheating, one boot coming out to knock into Sam's shin with unerring accuracy. Sam kicks back automatically. "You wouldn't have one if you didn't use your freaky mindshit powers for everything," Dean says.

Which is sort of true, but also not at the same time. He gets headaches all the time now. Dean knows it, which is why he's probably crushed up a couple of pain pills into that coffee. He's just being a pain in the ass about handing it over.

Using the telekinesis isn't as hard on his head as the visions used to be, even if it still hurts. It's worth the pout Dean gets whenever Sam uses something he can't counter.

Sam watches, arms resting on the table top, as Dean's fingers lose their battle and the cup slips from his grip. If anyone were watching now (which they aren't. Sam's not stupid, for one, and Dean's not oblivious enough to let Sam get away with pulling this if another person were paying any attention to them), they'd see the mug slide gently from one side of the table to the other, coming to a rest between Sam's forearms.

His brother watches it go with narrow eyes. "Friggin' cheater," he mutters, and kicks Sam's shoe for good measure.

They're Dean's shoes anyway, Sam thinks, curling his toes in the too-cramped space. He peaceably picks up his newly stolen coffee. If Dean wants to kick them to hell and back, he's welcome to do it, as long as he's not wearing the steel-toed boots while he does it.

"If you're done fondling my drink there, princess," Dean says leadingly. Dean's restless, still a little pissed off that all they'd been able to do with Anastasia was burn her ingredients and spell books, and throw out the last of her unholy tea. "We're kind of on a time table here, Sammy."

Sam takes a sip of his coffee and recognizes the slightly gritty texture that comes from a combination of horrible coffee and his brother slipping him medication in his drinks. He doesn't even bother to comment on it. It's not like Dean doesn't know he knows.

"I'm surprised," he says instead, "No salt?"

"Nah. I'll save it for your to-go mug," Dean says. He taps his fingers against the tabletop, looking out the window. "Your new best friend gonna be able to pick up our tracks if we split soon?"

Considering the man had managed to follow them from Daly, California (which is when both of them are pretty sure was the first time he'd picked up on them) to Lawrence, Kansas, it was pretty likely. "Probably."

"Awesome."

Sam swallows another mouthful of coffee and doesn't respond to that. It's not like he needs too; Dean's always going to be jumpy when it comes to him. Part of that's his fault, but most of it is Dad's. A little bit might even be Dean's, because he didn't have to take a four year old's promise that seriously.

He's still contemplating what he thought constituted a promise at four ("promise will take bath tonight, Dean, promise,") when the vision hits.

Without the pain, it takes him a few seconds to recognize that it is a vision. At first, all he sees is a blonde girl, sitting in a booth a lot like the one he's in. She's his age, maybe a little bit younger, big hazel eyes and a sweet smile, sitting in close with another girl.

Gradually, his fuzzy brain points out that Dean's not across from him, that he can't see his arms even if he could have felt them. He lets go of the panic that always accompanies visions, no matter how small and piddly they are without the Yellow-Eyed Demon around to fuck with them, and watches.

The visions about the blonde girl, he knows immediately. He can barely see the other girl's face at all, just the sweep of her chin and the fall of her hair, but the blonde girl... she's in high definition. He can see the pimple forming on her chin and the chicken pox scar on her eyebrow.

"Lily," he says out loud, for Dean's benefit, mostly. He doesn't need to say anything to remember his visions. He never forgets them.

Her name's Lily and she would have been one of the Demon's children. Had been one, in the other life, he's pretty sure. Sam thinks she might have been one of the ones that burned.

She's leaning in closer to the other girl, smiling wider and wider as she says something and laughs. He doesn't get sound in the visions anymore, just snapshots of pictures, things that could happen.

This is how it is now, the vision says, smugly, and then it fast forwards thirty seconds, quickly, and it's like watching a movie in double time, only not. One second, Lily's grinning like she's won the lottery, reaching for the other girl's hand, and the next her mouth's open in a silent scream, only a blur separating the two crystal clear pictures.

Sam hasn't ever been able to describe any of his powers, even to himself.

The girl Lily's with spasms against her side, hand clutched tight in Lily's. Sam watches as she seizes, feeling the sparks of power jerking from Lily's hand to hers and back again, seeing the way Lily can't let go and the girl can't even scream.

It's a lot like Scott's power, he thinks detachedly. If he's not detached, he's going to wake up screaming like he used to, curled up in a ball with Dean hovering and demanding answers.

The girl finishes dying, Lily crying hysterically, silently, over her hair while the rest of the diner stands back and gawks. Sam waits for the vision to end, eyes flicking over the surroundings so he can describe them to Dean.

He knows where it's going to take place. He looks at Lily, hunched over her girlfriend, and he just. Knows. She's an eighteen year old girl in San Diego who's powers have just decided they want to graduate from harmless to deadly. That doesn't mean Dean's not going to want something tangible to cling to in order to make sure.

The vision ends just as quickly as it started up.

Sam's not holding his coffee cup anymore. He figures the only reason it's not in his lap is that Dean'd rescued it from his hands, but he really doesn't know for sure. His head doesn't hurt, but he's still leaning forward with it braced on Dean's shoulder, Dean's hands offering support for his arm and shoulder.

"You back with me?" Dean asks tightly. He's clutching at Sam's body hard enough to hurt a little, fingers digging into the borrowed layers of flannel and cotton as he gives Sam a little shake. It's enough to make Sam focus on him again.

Sam thinks, abstractedly, that visions usually don't knock him on his ass like this anymore.

Then he looks into Dean's eyes and throws up all over his flannel shirt.

* * *

Dean figures he can maybe forgive Sam for upchucking all over his last clean trio of shirts in, oh, give or take ten years. Jesus. He'd thought he'd missed that particular part of big brotherhood this time around; Gayle, at least, had been capable of keeping her formula, eggs, waffles, and sandwiches to herself. Sammy? Not so much.

Right now, though, he concentrates more on getting Sam back to their motel room before he does it again.

"Thought you said this didn't happen anymore," he says.

Sam tightens the arm Dean's got around his own neck and takes a heavy breath. Dean has to shimmy to the side a little when Sam decides his shoe would be the perfect place to put his own foot.

They both smell like puked up coffee, so that can't be helping to settle Sam's stomach, but there's fuck all Dean can do about it right now. He's got a choice between letting go of his brother long enough to whip off his shirts or hanging on and smelling like vomit.

Guess which one he's more inclined towards.

He's hauling Sammy's deadweight out of the diner, getting seriously bad flashbacks to the last damn time he'd had to take care of Sam in the aftermath of a vision.

The last time he'd had to haul Sam around like this, the kid had been half dead from repeated visions. Sam'd been ten pounds too light after a week of marathon visions, still heavier than he is now, but not by much. He'd also been dehydrated and slightly loopy even when the visions weren't hitting.

The feeling of helpless anger is tempered with the sour terror that something fucking big might be going down and all he's got to go on, at least until Sam pulls his head together from wherever it's decided to go on vacation, is a freakin' flower name. Not even one of those flowers that are useful, like rosemary or pansy, or, hell, foxglove. No. A friggin' lily.

He doesn't realize he's grumbling under his breath about it until Sam stirs a little bit on his shoulder. "Not a lily," Sam mumbles against his jacket. "Lily. Her name."

"Helpful, Sammy," Dean snaps back at him, "I was dying to know your vision chick's name. Really. I'm not trying to get us to the car or anything useful right now. How about you concentrate on putting those gigantic feet somewhere my feet _aren't_ and we'll discuss your choice in girl's names later on, huh?"

The fucker kind of chuckles against Dean's shoulder.

His baby comes into view right then, so Dean doesn't drop Sam like he might have wanted to. Instead, he props his brother against the back door long enough to wrestle the passenger side open, then slides him into the car with a minimal amount of bony elbows in uncomfortable places.

Sam sits with his feet on the pavement, head down between his legs.

Dean lets him breathe down there long enough that he can pull his shirts off and wad them up. He looks down at them, looks at Sam, still a little green around the edges, and grimaces. He wasn't wearing anything that was irreplaceable (Sam would have been on his friggin' own if he'd thrown up on Dad's leather jacket, though), so he half-shrugs, uses the shirts to clean up the little bit of wet that'd managed to seep through, and goes looking for the nearest garbage can.

Sam's got his own legs in the Impala when Dean gets back, because the frickin' trash is way the hell up the street and he'd been stopped twice by teenage girls who'd giggled and stared at his chest. Fun times.

"You gonna be okay to go, or do I need to find something for you to hurl in?" he asks.

Sam tilts his head a little to look at him and he already looks better, more color in his cheeks and hair starting to dry from the sweat slicked mess it'd become. Sammy's hair's always been a good barometer of how he's doin': if it's stringy and sweaty, chances are Sam's having a shitty kind of day.

"I'll be fine," Sam says, softly, like his head is killing him, and Dean regrets that he didn't slip anything stronger into his coffee.

"You sure?" He reaches out to ruffle Sam's hair and Sam's just a little too slow to bat his hand away before he takes it off himself. Reactions still a little off, Dean notes clinically, and pokes some more. "You puke in my car and I'll throw your ass out of it, moving vehicle or not."

This is the language of brothers. Dean had missed that, because if he'd said something like that to Gayle right after she'd finished hurling? She'd just burst into tears.

Sam gives him a slight smile, still a little green around the edges, and shaky to boot, and reaches out to close the car door in his face.

Dean thumps the hood of the car twice, just to see Sam's face twist up into that exact combination of pissy and slightly nauseous that he now can place as something that's inherently _Mom_. She'd had that exact same expression the last time she'd had the flu.

He's feeling pretty good when he slides behind the wheel of his baby, the earlier helplessness banished.

Sam flicks an eye to take in his lack of shirt and grimaces. "Sorry, man."

"Dude," Dean tells him as he starts the Impala up. His baby purrs like no tomorrow and it soothes whatever frazzled nerves he might have still had. "You owe me so much pie for that. Cherry. None of that vanilla cream shit."

His brother tilts his head back to rest against the seat. "You like vanilla cream. You like any kind of pie," he points out, then, "Even apple."

"Yeah, I love me some apple pie," Dean says, sarcastic. "Where do they sell that really good stuff? Burketsville?"

"They don't have orchards anymore," Sam says peacefully. He's got this beatific look on his face when he says it, butter-wouldn't-melt-in-his-mouth innocent.

Dean can remember the scorched ground of Burketsville pretty damn clearly. He wants to ruffle Sam's hair for it, but settles for a mental, "that's my boy," and scratches at a healing scab on his chest.

His fingers come away covered with something slightly damp and crusty. "Pie," he says direly.

"You've got all the money right now, man. Buy it yourself. My treat."

Dean just hums out a response, not really paying attention.

He reaches into the backseat of the Impala while he waits for the tape to turn over so he can start driving (he's not driving if he doesn't have a theme track going). There's a clean shirt back there somewhere, or at least one that's clean enough it isn't stinking up the car, and he makes a triumphant noise in the back of his throat when his fingers catch on cloth.

Wiggling into a t-shirt while hampered by the wheel and the seat isn't really his idea of a good time, but he gets the shirt on. No thanks to Sam, who just snickers under his breath when Dean accidentally hits the horn with his elbow.

"You shut up," Dean says as soon as he's got his head through the head-hole.

Sam smiles a little bit, rolling his head against the back of the seat while Dean puts the car into gear.

The motel room's something on fifteen miles away, downtown driving, and Lawrence isn't really all that small anymore. They'd been on their way to Mom and Dad's, stopping both for a bite to eat and because Sam's tail had shown up again.

Fifteen minutes is more than enough time for the Impala to work her magic.

It didn't used to be like this, but Dean's noticed that Sam? Pretty much conks out the minute the car hits her stride. He can be in the middle of a conversation, in the middle of researching through one of the many books Dean's got stashed in the backseat of the car, and he'll still manage to pass out between one blink and the next.

Dean thinks it's kind of cute. From what he's seen, it's only the Impala that does the trick and that's... cute. Squishy princess feeling inducing, even, that Sam feels safe enough in the car to fall asleep no matter what he's doing or that he missed her (and Dean) enough to not want to leave it when he's half-asleep.

Cute, but it doesn't stop him from doodling moustaches and dirty words across Sam's face. No permanent marker, 'cause the one time he did that he woke up the next morning pinned down on the bed with no hands touching him as Sam calmly read on the laptop. His marker, floating in midair, had proceeded to write "I'm a dick," on his face until there wasn't any more room.

So yeah, no markers. Some other stuff sometimes, though.

Right now though, Dean's counting on it to calm Sam down from whatever post-vision low he's floating on. He's gonna have a talk with Sam later on about what does and does not constitute "better" when it comes to getting freaky head pictures.

"We have to go to San Diego," Sam says softly. He's rubbing his head with the fingers of his right hand, not really paying attention to what he's doing, Dean can tell. "Lily's got a few days before her powers go haywire."

"Haywire as in, 'whoops, I killed the cat,' or as in apocalypse haywire?" Dean asks. It doesn't matter if Sam's talking now. He'll still be out by the time they hit the motel.

Dean reaches over and rolls down his window a little bit, gets some fresh air circling, because it still smells like puke and Sam's gonna put his head on his window any second now to have the cold glass on his temple.

"Haywire as in she'll give her girlfriend a heart attack." Sam sits up a little bit, then slouches sideways, one knee almost knocking into Dean's as he settles his head against the window. He closes his eyes with a sigh. "Literally."

"We're supposed to be visiting Mom and Dad," Dean says.

He's already running through the list of excuses he can get away with making to Mom, even before Sam opens his eyes to look at him like a lost, sick puppy. A lost, sick puppy you just want to take home, despite the fact that its feet are humongous and it's gonna turn into a monster dog in a few months.

"What day's she gonna go defib her girl?"

Sam's already started to breathe a little heavier, getting closer to sleep. Dean doesn't care what the lying little bitch says, visions still wear him out. "We've got until June 18th, I think."

Dean sucks on his teeth, trying to think. "If we drop by, say hi, we can leave here tomorrow and still make it," he says.

His brother doesn't answer.

It's a good thing too, because Dean? Really doesn't want to have to choose between his brother's puppy eyes (lethal and registered as such, even if Sam claims he's a dork for hacking into the FBI database to do it) and the wrath of their mother (also lethal). Mom's pretty possessive about the both of them, even if she thinks Sam's Dean's boytoy.

Which was gonna be fun again. Sam basked in the affection, but between Mom and Dad, they went from one extreme to the other, hot then cold, with volatile Gayle in the middle. It made for a freakin' huge headache, and as much as he loved their parents, he was ready and willing to tell them they had plans to leave soon.

He spends the ride to the motel room going over the most believable lies he could think of.

The motel is small, grimy, just the kind of place to make Dean feel at home. Sam snuffles a little bit against the back of his seat when Dean turns the car off, but he doesn't wake up. Fine by Dean. They've only got two duffels at the moment, one full of weapons and one full of clothes, so it's not like it's a pain in the ass to pack.

Money's a little tight right now. Sam's been wearing Dean's clothes for the last five months, with the exception of a pair of jeans and some sneakers that are his. He knows it makes Mom twitch whenever she sees them, because Sam might be around the same height as him (Dean is not acknowledging the inch Sam's already gained on him in the last few months), but he's in that gangly, half-anorexic stage.

You could cut your fingers on Sam's collarbones at the moment and Dean's caught more than one narrow eyed look from a police officer who thinks Sam's maybe a little bit younger than he looks. Whatever. It's not like he starves the gigantor. Sammy's just growing. Again. Fucker.

If he gets one more lecture on the proper way to feed his man, he's gonna go nutso. Women'd always wanted to feed Sammy during a growth spurt.

Sam's awake by the time he gets back out of the motel room. His eyes aren't open, but Dean can see it in his body language (thank God, something that hasn't changed); in the way he's a little tense.

He deliberately throws the duffels in the trunk hard enough to rock the Impala on her shocks. The car settles back down with a familiar creak of metal and Dean slams the trunk closed as soon as she's still again.

By the time Dean's walked around to his side of the car, Sam's slumped over, passed out again. Dean chuckles under his breath as he gets behind the wheel, shaking his head. "Easy," he mutters. And Sam really, really is.

Sometimes.

Alright, occasionally. When he's half-asleep and Dean can sympathize with waking up expecting someone next to you and finding yourself alone. Of course, he sort of maybe blames knowing that feeling on Sam and his stupid, martyred stupidity, but, whatever. He can relate.

He's just putting the key into the Impala when the hair on the back of his neck stands up.

Someone's watching them.

Next to him, Sam's eyes snap abruptly open, pupils dilated so wide that Dean can only see black in his eyes. His brother fumbles out with one hand, knee jerking up to slam into the dashboard, and then he slumps over a little.

His heart starts pounding and he knows it's stupid as hell, but he just. Black eyes. Demon. He spends a second fumbling in his coat for the flask of holy water he's got stashed freakin' somewhere in there.

When his fingers close over the flask, he takes a deep breath. He still feels like he's being watched, like there's something about to seriously fuck up his day, but. He consciously makes himself relax, picking out the whites around Sam's eyes.

Not a demon, damnit. Sam's not a demon and if Dean can stop and think for a minute, he'd be able to explain why to himself.

"Dean," Sam says softly. He sounds like he's underwater or something, wavering, and his eyes are tracking something that's just not there. Dean knows what that freakin' means.

Not a possession. Another damn fucking vision.

"Yeah, Sammy," he says back, just as softly. He reaches out to rearrange Sam a little more comfortably, tucking his arm back into his lap instead of thrown halfway over the bench seat. "I got you."

It's taken a couple of the new visions, which Sam has every month or so, to figure out that Sam honestly can't hear him right now, no matter how loud he gets. Can't feel him either, and he doesn't have the guts to ask if it was like that in the other lifetime or if that's a new development too.

So he feels completely and utterly comfortable leaning his head against the Impala's steering wheel. "Still fucking hate these, little brother," he tells Sam, "Even if it is just your freaky brain this time around and not that Yellow-Eyed son of a bitch."

"Abigail," Sam says, voice going tight and horrified, "Dean, God, it's got her."

Dean's head comes up from where it's resting so quickly that his neck screams a complaint. He ignores it, tells it to shut the fuck up, and the Impala's screeching out of the parking lot a second later.

Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, his head's playing, over and over; igoddamn fucking fuckers/i better not touch his family. He'll kill them all.

"Hurry," Sam says. His voice is still slightly dreamy, not altogether there, but Dean knows that Sam knows he's usually listening when the damn things hit. Sam's talking to him. "Dad's at the house, hurry."

He floors it.

* * *

John's puttering around the kitchen.

Not that he actually putters, but. Pacing, maybe. He can be pacing. Real men pace, not putter, even if they are pacing over the thought of their boy coming home for the next few days.

Mary and Abby should be back soon, he hopes. They're both out shopping for groceries, if he's not mistaken, though he thinks Abby's more out because she's hoping that by some miracle she'll miss Dean coming if she's not home when he arrives.

Mary's got a cherry pie ready for the oven as soon as lunch's started, and there are potatoes already peeled, waiting in a bowl on the counter top. The girls'd had to run out to grab some green beans. Dean's favorites. Well, not so much the green beans, because his boy doesn't stand by anything green, but the pie. If there's anything his boy loves, it's pie.

John's job is to start the barbeque at noon. Steaks are his domain, and he's gonna cook them up rare and delicious just as soon as he has to, but that's something like a good two hours away though, so, for right now, he paces.

He'll be glad to see Dean. He really will be.

He'll be less glad to see Sam/James/whatever else he calls himself. The detective'd said that Sam/James wasn't dangerous, and John wants to believe that, but at the same time, the kid's a tall fucker. He's obviously got Dean wrapped around one of his massive paws and that doesn't sit right in John's stomach, especially not now that he knows the both of them are lying to him about something.

The front door opens just as he's working himself into a respectable temper. He's not gonna just come right out and demand to know what the kid's name is (at least not in front of Mary), but confronting Sam when he shows up with Dean? Getting the kid alone and asking him who the fuck he is?

He might just do that.

"Hey Dad!" Abby calls from the hallway.

He hears her toe off her tennis shoes, because Mary's ingrained into all of them that shoes belong outside only. Dean's the only exception, along with his Sam, because she never could get the boy to take off his boots for anything short of going to bed or showering.

"Mom's gonna grab something we forgot and then she'll be home," Abby continues. Her voice gets closer as she walks towards the kitchen, "She should be back in a--what the fuck?"

"Language."

There's the sound of scuffling in the hallway, and then Abby screams.

John recoils from the sound of it, because he's heard his girl shout in every state of mind imaginable, angry and happy and frustrated and _pissed_ , and he's never heard anything like this. It sounds like something scratching across the chalkboard, like a dog howling in concert with a police siren. It's _wrong._

It goes on for longer than it should, longer than a human throat can sustain a note, and John's just frozen up against the counter top because there's a _dual tone_ to that scream, like something deep and unhappy has laid itself over his daughter's voice.

The screaming stops, not abruptly, but gently. There's a breath of silence, where John's starting to convince himself that he's going senile, that, obviously, he needs to start taking some kind of medication like the goddamn doctors after 'Nam had tried to get him on.

Then: "Winchester. I'm going to rip your fucking throat out."

The voice sounds like Abby. But it isn't.

There's another thump, like something hitting the floor, and the voice comes back. "Johnny, 'm gonna getcha, I want your liver," Abby singsongs from the hallway, "I'm at your door."

The chill that'd been patiently waitin' while Abby'd screamed finally crawls down his spine. It leaves all his nerves on edge and his fingers twitching for the gun he'd gotten rid of when he'd found Dean hiding it under the bed fifteen years ago. He feels like he's back in the jungle, enemies on the left and dying friends on the right, and he can't _breathe._

That's his daughter out there, heckling him.

"Johnny!" she shouts, "Let me out of this or I swear to God, I'm gonna tear apart your family. All of them. Starting with little Abby here. You think she'd survive if I ripped open her wrists?"

John's banging out of the kitchen before he can stop to think about how weird it is hearing his daughter threaten herself in the third person. But he knows it's not his fuckin' daughter and he'll be damned before he lets anything hurt her.

Even herself.

"Ah, there you are!" she says brightly as soon as she sees him. She's got one wrist up to her mouth, perfect white teeth (John'd paid for the braces, he thinks a little hysterically, they'd damned well better be perfect) hovering over the artery under her thin skin. "Really, John, you shouldn't keep a girl waiting like that."

John just stares mutely at her.

She blinks black eyes at him. Real black eyes, not a regular black eye, not a bruise. But eyes that look like they're just... soul sucking, nothing in them but wrong, and John's falling back a step and struggling to remember his Hail Marys before he can think about it.

The thing tsks at him. "You were a lot more formidable before, you know," she says. When he continues to stumble over Latin, she sighs and crosses her arms with something that John _recognizes_. "That's not gonna work. You're saying the wrong thing, for one. And very, very badly, for another.

"Now, why don't you break this circle like a good little boy and maybe I'll let Abigail live through all this, huh? After all, she's not really a Winchester. Not the right kind, anyway."

That's something to latch onto, something that almost feels normal. John's opening his mouth and blurting out, "You shut your mouth."

It smells like burning matches. Sulfur, John identifies.

The thing, Abby, not-Abby, she just reaches up to push her hair out of her face, one hand cupping her elbow. John's seen that move so often that it aches. She's moving like Abby and she's talking like her and John's vision spins a little dark around the edges. Fucking ridiculous dream is what it is.

"Not that it matters," she says, "But, no, your Abby really isn't a Winchester. That's kind of like saying a hotdog is a hotdog is a hotdog, when really, everyone knows that the only thing that's an actual hotdog is a Oscar Meyer Weiner. She's just a pale imitation, baby."

John's spinning around like he hasn't got an anchor, and all he can think is that he's crazy. He's crazy or he's dreaming or there's some logical reason that his brain's decided it wants to hallucinate an encounter with his daughter being his not-daughter.

"Pay attention, John." The thing snaps her fingers, reaches down to pull up the center of the rug, exposing the edges of the permanent marker drawing Dean'd inked into the floor years ago. It's glowing, something John's never seen before in his entire life and he sure as hell wishes he weren't seeing it now. His hands twitch for a gun and he tucks them into fists to stop it.

"See, this thing is kind of cramping my style here, John-boy. You're gonna get rid of it for me."

"You're a..."

"Demon. Jesus, you Winchesters are sort of pathetic without the demon hunting, aren't you?" she says. She rocks back on her bare heels, staring up at him with her black eyes, and John's. "I mean, we thought it'd be a little bit of a challenge still, because, hell, _Winchesters._ But you're just a regular little human now, aren't you? Not even any fun to torment."

He's thinking that demons aren't real, anymore than there's a God or a Santa Claus. Demons don't happen.

"Johnny, I'm gettin' a little impatient here. I'm sure Mommy dearest is feeling the same way."

Mary, John thinks with a sick feeling. This has to be a dream, because only in his head would something be fucked up enough to _possess_ his daughter like some kind of badly written Exorcism movie and threaten his wife at the same time. It's. Not. Happening.

John turns his head a little bit, closing his eyes. When he opens them again, she's still looking at him, black eyes and Abby's pale blonde hair. He doesn't know what to do. This is out of his league, and he knows it, and goddamn the demon (fuck), but she knows it too.

He needs a priest. He needs a doctor, to check his sanity.

In the kitchen, John can hear the door open and close. The (fuck, oh God) demon hears it too, cocking Abby's head to the side with a narrow eyed look. "Now, who could that be?"

"That'd be us, bitch," Dean's voice says.

John's eyes snap to the side, trying to see without taking his eyes off of the _thing_ in his girl. Dean swaggers right on by him, boots tracking mud through the hallway. Mary'd throw a fit if she saw that, John thinks; the mud and Dean's boots and her floor.

"Hey there," Dean leans in to look at Abby (the demon), carefully making sure all of his body parts stay outside of the faintly glowing circle she's standing in the middle of, "You ready to go back to hell?"

Sam's a quieter shadow slipping by him then, not a sound.

Abby snarls as soon as she seems Sam. John can relate. He feels like he's missing something important, something vital, when she hisses out, "Winchester," like it's a vile curse.

"Damn straight," Dean says. "You picked the wrong damn family to mess with. You got this one, Sammy?"

"Yeah," Sam says. His voice is deeper than John's used to it being, darker, like there's something lurking under the damn surface, and that's just what he needs on top of everything else. He'd better be dreaming.

Sam's voice goes even deeper, if that's possible, when he starts to recite something. It sounds Latin, John thinks, dazed and being thrown upside down again. It sounds Latin and it sounds like something a priest would say, and there's a sudden breeze whipping up from out of nowhere, stirring through the house.

In the circle, the demon looses her sneer. As Sam's voice rises and falls, a look crosses her face, like pain, and John's moving forward before he can think about it.

That may not be his daughter in there, but there's some instinctual part in any parent that won't let you stand by when your kid is hurting.

Before he gets more than a few inches from the position he was in, Dean catches his arm. When John pulls, Dean just tightens his grip, hard; fingers digging into John's biceps with surprising strength.

"You let Sam do what he needs to do," Dean says quietly when John turns to look at him with furious eyes. He squeezes his hand once, still too hard, and John's gonna have a bruise tomorrow if this isn't all a dream. "That's not Gayle in there right now, Dad. That's a demon and she's gonna be _pissed_ if you fuck this up and let her out."

"Winchester," Abby hisses again. She leans forward a little bit, talking over the sound of Sam's voice, and smiles. "You're breaking the rules, Winchester."

Sam stops for a second. The wind fades a little bit around all four of them, Dean holding John's arm and John watching Sam watch not-Abby. "I'm sending you back to hell," Sam says, "Not killing you. That was the deal."

"Oh, and wasn't there a little part about you demons leaving us the fuck alone too?" Dean butts in. "I seem to remember somethin' like that."

Abby looks at them, tilting her head to the side, like a bird. John's stomach drops out from his guts. "We don't all play by the rules. Take you, for example. Dead men usually can't make wishes."

The Latin picks up again before John can figure out what the hell that sentence was supposed to mean. This whole thing is confusing and unreal and he'd pinch himself, if Dean wasn't doing a good enough job of it.

Sam's voice hits a high note, holding it perfectly, before it goes low again.

Abby jerks back like it hurts.

Her face whips to the side once, almost too fast for John's eyes to catch. She blurs before his eyes, becoming something other for a half beat, and any misgivings John may've had vanish, just like that. Nothing in nature can do that, nothing alive. There's no disease that can. It's a demon. An honest to God, demon.

The second he stops pulling towards her, even subconsciously, Dean lets up a little on the bruising force he'd been using.

Dean's watching the demon pant, eyes narrowed. "Bring it on home, Sam," he says, and Sam nods once, voice rising and falling with the pattern of his words.

John can get his mouth open, but he words get tangled up on his tongue and break up on the back of his teeth. He wants to ask what the fuck they think they're doing, he wants to shake Dean and ask him if he goddamn _knows_ about what's got Abby, if he knows about _demons_  but he can't get past the sound of Latin rolling off of his son's boyfriend's tongue.

Something about the words are tickling his brain, like he's heard them before, in another place. He can _hear_ Dean lisping them childishly, but there's another voice joining in, and for half a second, he's sure he's got two boys instead of a boy and a girl.

"We've still got Mary," not-Abby gasps. "We've still got her and we'll make you pay, Winchester."

"Sweetheart," Dean says, "You can try."

John takes his eyes off Abby, still jerking in ways that aren't physically possible, and looks at his eldest. He's in the twilight zone, because not only is Abby possessed, but his son's boyfriend is chanting something that they seem to think will help and his son...

Dean looks dangerous. For the first time in his life, John wonders just what his son could get away with, if he really wanted to.

"But you see," Dean says, and he talks right under Sam's voice, leaning in close to where Abby's panting and twisting in the circle, "I'm gonna hunt every one of you little bastards down. And then I'm gonna send you back to hell."

He twists, letting go of John's arm, to look at Sam. "Or, hey, if Sammy's feeling particularly pissy, I'm sure he'll let you skip that step and just _die._ "

Sam blows his bangs out of his eyes, still looking incongruously _harmless_ to John. "Shut up, Dean," he says on an exhale, picking up the Latin without pause as soon as he's said Dean's name.

John wants to tell him to watch his goddamn mouth when he's talking to his boy. He saves his breath. He's barely getting enough of it as it is. All of the air in the room seems to be sucked out, sucked towards where Abby (demon) is snarling silently, head hanging while she pants.

Dean makes a scoffing noise at Sam and turns back to Abby.

Abby's head snaps back as soon as Dean's eyes turn back towards her, like she was waiting or like Sam'd timed it just right. John can't tell and he can barely breathe and his sight goes dark around the edges, a little dim, because that's _smoke_ pouring out of his daughter's mouth, like they've just lit a fire inside of her. He expects flames to come licking out of her mouth and he's reaching forward too quickly for Dean to react at all, head full of visions of women on fire, their blonde hair crisping to black.

He catches Abby just as she starts to slump over. Her head tucks under his chin just like it did when she was newborn, eight, twelve and missing her brother like a lost limb, and she fits. She'll never not fit, he knows, not matter what the hell's been done to her, _inside of her_.

"Daddy," Abby whimpers. It's more a reflex than anything, 'cause she's out against him, splattered out against his shoulder. "Daddy."

John tucks her into his chest and makes the same nonsense shushing sounds he'd made when she was a baby. "It's alright, baby girl, I've got you, it's alright."

"Sam," Dean's voice warns.

There's an edge to it John'd love to decipher, but he's got his girl in his arms like he'd wanted to do since he'd realized there was something wrong with her and he just doesn't give a good goddamn what's in Dean's voice right now.

"It's gone, it's fine," Sam says back.

"Flew the damn coop?"

"No," Sam says, hoarse. "I've got it. Gimme a minute and I can..."

"You're not doin' anything else today, Sasquatch. Sit your ass down."

John glances up from Abby's hair and watches Dean guide Sam down to the floor, murmuring quietly under his breath the whole way. Sam leans heavily against Dean as he goes down, like whatever the hell he did just took a good chunk of energy, and John rubs a hand across Abby's back, feeling both grateful and confused as all hell.

Dean's got no such feelings. "See, this is why you shouldn't hide shit from me. Oh, no, my visions don't hurt anymore, Dean, I've just always got a fucker of a headache anyway," he says, and Sam just snorts, tilting his head up a little to shoot what even John can see is a half-hearted glare at Dean.

John looks back down at Abby for a second, just checking, making sure that that's really his girl slumped quiet in his arms, and when he looks up, he wishes he hadn't. Dean's crouching next to Sam now, having lowered them both to the ground. One hand's on top of Sam's head, fingers ruffling for a brief second, and John feels like a goddamn intruder in his own house.

With his face tucked into Abby's hair, he can't smell the sulfur that's been permeating since Sam first started chanting.

"Sammy, man, hope to hell that's part of your plan."

"It is."

John reluctantly lifts his head again, just to see what the hell's got Dean sounding tense all over. They'd just banished what amounted to a _demon_ from his daughter. John can't see how anything could possibly top that.

There's black smoke hovering over them all.

As John watches, stunned, speechless, and horrified, it makes a sound like sand scouring bone. It looks like it's trying to get away, feinting left and right as it pounds tendrils of black against something invisible. Sam's looking at it, eyes pinched and tired, but Dean's got one hand on Sam's shoulder, watching him instead.

"Hey," Dean says, nudging Sam a little. "You good to do... whatever it is you need to do to that to make it go poof?"

He's gone gentle, John realizes, and unconsciously touches the back of Abby's head. He's gone gentle just the way he'd used to do with Abby and that causes something to twist and turn in his gut. Aside from the feelings already twisting there. He's gonna throw up before this is all over, mark his words.

"Yeah." Sam sounds half dead, but determined, and Dean gives his shoulder two quick pats before he stands from his crouch and heads over to John.

John takes his eyes off the shifting mass of black above them and watches the toes of Dean's boots edge up to the circle inked onto the floor. It's no longer glowing, just the straight lines and the curves Dean'd penned there almost twenty years ago. John can remember nights spent scrubbing to try to get it up, Mary sitting on the stairs and watching with her chin in her hands.

He feels the bile start up in his throat at the thought that Dean, his Dean, four years old and _strange_ , had known enough about what was out there to set a trap for it.

Dean's watching him when he looks up from the circle. "Let's get out of here, Dad," he says softly. "Sammy's gonna take care of the demon."

How, John wants to ask. How the hell is one tall, skinny floppy-haired boy with big puppy eyes going to take care of a _demon_ , how'd they get it out in the first place, how'd they know what it was, how did _Dean_ know what it was, how. There's too many questions crowding behind his teeth, though, so instead he gathers his feet underneath him and pushes up.

When Dean reaches forward to help him support Abby, John catches himself wanting to slap his hand away and belt him in the face. Abruptly, he's angry, holding onto his girl and without a goddamn clue where his wife is, just the rambling viciousness of a demon for any kind of help.

He cradles Abby against him, finding his balance, and turns away from Dean's outstretched hands. He's gonna get his daughter settled somewhere, somewhere he can watch her and make sure she's _safe_ , and then.

He's got one more how question for Dean, once he gets his tongue back.

How could you have known about things like that and not told us?

* * *

Sam can see Dad and Dean staring at each other out of the corner of his eye. Dad's got that look on his face, that intimately familiar look that says one of them has screwed up, and bad, and Sam spares a thought for how fucked up his life is that he _knows_ that look, even if he's not, technically, his father's son this time around.

Then it goes weird, because Dean lifts his chin in silent denial of whatever he's seeing in Dad's eyes, not backing down, and Sam's reminded that everything's _different_ now.

For a second, he's got the disconcerting thought that this was what it was like being Dean in that other life, seeing Dad seethe and Sam lift his chin, from the outside.

Then he rolls his head against the wall to shake the thought loose and concentrates on the pissed off demon hovering in the air above the devil's trap.

It's not bound by the devil's trap, not anymore, because the devil's trap's mostly used for one time exorcisms. It needs time to recharge, to collect enough energy to hold another demon, and in the meantime? Sam's the lucky one who gets to act like a human lock.

He could just let go and the demon would be pulled into hell (Sam can feel it tugging at the edges of his power, like something's put a fist in the demon and is warring with him for possession of it), but he wants answers. Failing that, he wants it dead.

He didn't make that deal, live through his entire family dying, to let a demon fuck it up now.

The demon twists into itself. Sam watches it detachedly and braces himself. A second later, the demon lashes out with all its energy, battering at the mental walls Sam's holding it with.

To Sam, it kind of looks like colored sand splattering all over a very clear window.

His head feels like it's going to fall off any second now, or maybe like there's a trio of little men with picks inside it. He's not used to having two visions in a day, and the exorcism, with the demon screaming in the back of his skull the entire time hadn't helped all that much.

He's trying to work up the energy to fry the damn thing. So far, it's not working real well.

"Sammy," Dean says, and Sam blinks open eyes he doesn't even remember closing. He's tired.

Dean's crouched down in front of him again, looking him over with critical eyes. "You're about ready to keel, aren't you?"

"I'm good."

"Uh-huh." Dean reaches out and pokes him in the shoulder. Hard. In the seconds it takes Sam to process this, he's already falling towards the floor.

Dean catches him before he can smack his head against the hardwood. Above the devil's trap, Sam's pretty sure the demon's snickering at him. He shoots it a nasty look and it subsides, meekly pulling into a ball before slamming itself against the box he's got around it.

"You're a mess," Dean says. "I wouldn't trust you with a gun at this point, Sam, let alone that freaky ass brain of yours." He looks up and narrows his eyes at the demon still twisting in the air. His lips press together, pissed off, but he looks back at Sam and rocks back on his heels. "Let it go."

Sam gets a hand on the ground, pushes himself upright, and bats Dean's fingers off of his head. "I can do it."

"Well, great." Dean pushes himself to his feet, using Sam's head as leverage like he used to do when Sam was way smaller than him. "'Cause I gotta tell you man, that whole falling over thing? That inspires confidence, it really does."

"Bite me."

His brother's an ass sometimes. No two ways about it. But then Dean leans over to give him a boost up, because they both know Sam's not gonna talk to this thing sitting on his ass, and Sam's forced to admit he's not so bad.

He might have even missed him when he wasn't around.

Dean nudges his arm a little. "Dad's not gonna stay tucked up there with Gayle forever," he says.

"Yeah."

This time, he knows that the demon is speaking directly into his skull, because he's got to twist his mind just so, pull up all the fragments of that Yellow-Eyed bitch he'd absorbed so that he can tune into it. A burst of cussing screeches across his brain. It's not in English and it's not in Latin, it just is, and it feels like chewing on tinfoil.

"Your face is gonna get stuck that way," Dean says laconically. "Sammy bitch original." Right before he leans over so Sam can brace his shoulder against his brother's. Alright, he'd missed Dean.

The demon's staring at him when he looks up again. "Think you're so smart, so good," it says, "We're going to cut you Winchesters out of existence."

"Why?"

"Because." The demon shifts a little testing the boundary he's holding it to.

"Because isn't an answer," he parrots back at it.

Dean, leaning against the wall next to him and watching, even if he's trying to be discreet, snorts a laugh under his breath. That'd been the mantra of Sam's first childhood. _Because isn't an answer, Sammy; why'd you stuff the cat's eye shells up your nose?_

"Answer enough for you."

Sam tilts his head to the side a little, trying to get his hair out of his eyes. It's time to let Dean chop an inch or so off, but he's not going to bring that up anytime soon. "You know I can kill you, right?"

"Death or hell, Sam," the demon murmurs. It strikes out again at the hold he's got on it and recoils once it realizes exactly what's waiting for it if he lets go. "Not much of a difference to me. What about you?"

Almost against his will, Sam's eyes slide over to look at Dean again. What would he choose? It depended on a lot of things. Would he be alone in hell? Would he find his brother if he died? Or would he be able to make a demon deal to make sure neither of that ever happened?

The demon laughs, whisper of menace curling like smoke from ashes. "You chose him, yes. Was that a smart choice, do you think, Sam? Dean over death. Deal with the devils."

"Smartest thing I ever did," Sam says simply.

Dean bumps his shoulder, hard, says, "Frickin' dumbest thing you ever done, and that's sayin' a lot."

He's not an idiot and he still doesn't agree with Sam having done any of this. Sam couldn't care less about that opinion. He would have preferred it if Dean didn't go off on a mini-meltdown rant about it every few weeks, but, the decision was still a good one. For the most part.

There's a tug on his mind, like the call of hell's winning out over his hold. Both he and the demon wince, but that doesn't stop it from opening its metaphorical mouth. "What about mommy-dearest? Would you make a deal for her?"

The cold truth of it is that he wouldn't. He loves Mom like he loves Dad, like any child loves their parent, but neither of them are as essential to him as his brother is. The fucker knows it too.

"Where is she?" He can probably track her down. Maybe. After his head's finished trying to fall off his shoulders and after the buzzing in his skull dies back down into mostly silence.

"Getting acquainted with the reasons why no one should marry a Winchester."

Not good enough. Sam finally squeezes his eyes shut and grips the demon, flicking it just _so_. He can't explain what he's doing to it, but it's got to hurt like nothing else. The demon recoils in pain, an offended screech of horrified noise in his mind, and settles down, panting, when Sam stops.

"Where is she?" he asks again, and this time the demon answers.

It's more a series of pictures, nothing really concrete. It's a suggestion of a place, not there and there, and Sam thinks that the demon doesn't even know where she's going.

You can ask and ask, but if the thing doesn't know, it's not going to tell you anything. And Sam doesn't care how evil the things are, he doesn't feel right torturing answers out of them.

So he switches questions. "Why'd you break the deal?" Sam asks.

Dean reaches into his jacket and pulls out his flask of holy water. The demon's watching him, whatever passes for its eyes fixed on Dean's hands, and Sam wants to laugh.

Dean's not planning on flinging that into the demon. Not unless Sam makes himself pass out and Dean feels vindictive about it. Mostly, Sam figures Dean's rolling it around because he needs something to do with his hands. He's gotta be bored with this, Sam knows, bored and on edge, because he can't hear the demon anymore than he can feel the pressure of a released vision still puttering around inside Sam's body.

His brother's as psychic as a post. One that's been buried in two feet of mud. It's more a blessing than a curse most days.

The demon's attention flicks back to him when Sam reaches out for it again. His head is killing him.

"Why, Sam? Why not?" It swirls again, rolling over itself, and does something that the dead demon in him recognizes as a smile. "Not all of us are so forgiving of Winchesters, you know. We're going to make you wish you'd never been born."

It twitches in his grip, feebly, and Sam can feel the both of them weakening. Demons didn't do well for long without a body to rundown. "You can tell me, or you can go to hell. Your choice." He lets up on his hold for long enough that the demon can feel the pull, the Latin still working even if Sam's fighting it for the time being.

All he's got to do is let go and the demon'll go to hell. Bone and blood and fear, Meg had said to Dean a lifetime ago. Hometown of demon stock everywhere.

He's never met a suicidal demon before, but damned if that doesn't work on it. This demon tucks up into itself, petulant, and says, "Daddy dearest had more than two children, Sam. Think of this as vengeance."

As soon as the demon says it, Sam can feel the demon in him resonate with it. Appalled, he snuffs it out, clicking off whatever it is the demon remains does that lets him hear demon speech. When he opens his eyes again, the demon's nothing but a weird pile of smoke to him, no words coming from inside the mass and no weird connection trying to bloom.

There's just Dean, playing with his flask of holy water like he really wants to unscrew the top and fling the entire contents on the demon.

"Deal's a deal," Sam says softly.

He wonders, if he could still hear it, if the demon would be reconsidering right about now.

The demon snuffs out of existence like it'd never been there in the first place. There's no ash, no ectoplasm, no smell of sulfur. One minute, Sam's holding it like he's got a mental fist full of sand, and the next it's just... gone. Slips through his fingers to disappear in mid-air without even a noise.

It burns just as well as everything else. Maybe a little better.

Sam's got the incongruous thought that if mankind just harnessed demons to burn, they'd have clean, efficient energy in no time.

Then he slumps against Dean's supporting shoulder and concentrates on not passing out.

Dean jostles his head a little bit, just enough that Sam stops thinking it really is a comfortable place to lose consciousness. "You get what we need?" he asks.

"Not really."

There's a long pause. "And you just roasted it?" The disbelief in Dean's voice is enough to rouse Sam a little more, but not much.

Sam winces. "Didn't know anything."

So far, Sam thinks his brother is keeping it together pretty well. Sam doesn't know Gayle or, hell, Mom and Dad all that well in this time, but he _knows_ that the only thing keeping him from freaking is how tired his brain is feeling.

The opposite arm from the shoulder he's leaning on comes up to pat his chest. "How's your demon radar these days?"

hr

Dean's not really surprised when Sam decides his shoulder's the most comfortable spot he's likely to find and promptly conks out against it. Still standing up and everything. Sam's always had that particular talent.

He's not surprised, but he is a little pissed, because no way is the fucker going to leave him to talk to Dad by himself. No. If they're gonna get their asses chewed out, than Sam had damn well better be awake to hear it too.

That doesn't really explain why he stands there for a couple minutes and lets Sam lean.

Dean crosses his arms (careful not to jar Sam's head), and widens his stance a little, taking what weight Sam's managing to slump against him instead of the wall. And he thinks.

His family's in trouble. His family's in trouble and once again it's a goddamn demon at fault, and if he didn't know it knocked Sam on his girly ass to torch the bastards, he'd have gone hunting for them a lot earlier than this, Sam's deal be damned. He hadn't made a deal.

Now they're here, missing Mom, with Sam almost dead on his feet, and Gayle waking up from her bout of possession and Dean's head is thinking about spinning.

He can't say it's a nightmare comin' true for him, because it isn't. His nightmares tend to focus on one person and a revolving door of monsters, spirits, and witches that try to hurt them. Three guesses as to who that person was, and the first two didn't count. It sure as hell wasn't Mom.

Doesn't mean that this isn't one of the worst things he's ever thought about late at night, though.

Thing is, he knows they'll find Mom. Aside from Sam's freaky demon finding skills, they've got thirty years of hunting on their side and demons were never all that bright. Besides, they're the brothers Winchester, like the brothers Grimm, only cooler. They'd won against that Yellow-Eyed son of a bitch (Bob, his mind supplies helpfully, we named him Bob) and there's no way in hell they're gonna lose to his second-rate kids.

Explainin' that to Dad, though, was gonna be a whole 'nother ballgame.

And Sam's trying to get his way out of having to do his fair share.

The house is creaking in a distinctive way Dean's learned over a lifetime meant someone was coming downstairs. Two different creaks, because of course Gayle was up and walking; she's like a whitewashed Sam; more innocent and cranky, with all of Sam's stubbornness and none of his common fucking sense, so of course she'd follow Dad downstairs to get answers.

He's a little proud of her, truth be told, but she's not his in the way Sam is. For one thing, he's pretty sure Sam never wanted to gouge his eyes out and spit on his grave. Pretty sure.

Anyway, Dad's coming downstairs, so Dean figures Sam's had enough of his powernap. "Hey, sleeping beauty," he says.

Sam doesn't respond, already trailing drool down into Dean's collar, so Dean? Dean decides now would be a good time to prove he's a good big brother.

He could use a laugh anyway.

He lifts his shoulder up high enough that Sam's head slips down towards his bicep and then ducks out of the way.

Most of the time, Sam's got a built in radar for when he does this; he'll start to slip and he'll jerk awake, sway on his feet a couple of times, and then right himself before his swaying can make him take a header. He'll blink for a couple seconds and slide sideways again. The second time he catches himself, he'll actually wake up most of the way, and then he goes deep red and apologizes, profusely, to anything and everything in range. Even the potted plants, the bed, the bathroom, hell, the wall.

Yeah, Sam doesn't really wake up all that quick unless he's having a nightmare to begin with.

It's one of the dumbest things Dean's ever seen, and he once saw a pair of high "Ghostbusters" who thought quoting B-horror movie dialogue at a ghost'd make it leave them alone.

True to form, Sam starts sliding as soon as he doesn't have Dean to lean against. Dean starts to smile, to relief a little of the tension that's still crawling up his spine, because, oh, God, Mom, but then Sam goes totally off script. He jerks upright, glares blearily at Dean, and shuffles a few steps over so he can drop his head back onto his shoulder.

There's a mumble, something that might have been a half-plaintive, whiny, "Dean," once. It comes out slurred and drooly, Sam's mouth hot against his shoulder, and Dean's got flashbacks to when Sam was three and used to whine until Dean let him sprawl all over him.

Dean stands very still.

Great. Another Sam-action that's different from before. He pats Sam awkwardly on top of his fuzzy, shaggy head and purses his lips. He'd really, really like it if his little brother could go back to being exactly what he'd lost.

Of course, that's when Dad comes down the stairs and sees the both of them.

Dean sort of thinks the world's out to get them. Not only do his parents think he's boning his little brother, they also always manage to catch him in one of the rare, touchy-feely moments. All the time. He doesn't even know how that's physically possible.

"He okay?" Dad asks gruffly. He's got one arm wrapped around Gayle's shoulders, like he's scared she's gonna fall apart or maybe just turn into something she isn't.

Dean knows the feeling. He tousles Sam's hair a little bit more, pulling it up into tuffs and whirls that make him look like a fluffy dog who'd just had a bath, and then he pats his brother on the back and steps back for real this time. "Just tired."

He props Sam up when Sam goes to lean against him again and gives him a little shake for good measure. "Up and at 'em, Sammy. Daylight's wastin'." Fastest way to wake Sam up has always been saying his name. He never did learn the trick of doing it when he was touched, because for the most part, Dean and Dad'd made damn sure nothing ever touched him in the night.

"'m awake," Sam slurs. Sam's eyes blink open, still bleary, but he's standing on his own two feet, and that's a win in Dean's book. He turns to look at Gayle.

She's shivering. She looks tiny and scared and traumatized in the curve of Dad's arm; skittish. Sam'd looked like that after Meg got finished with him the first time around, before they'd met her again.

But she's also got that look in her eyes that Dean'd recognize anyway. Winchester stubborn, he notes with something approaching pride. She's a Winchester through and through, no matter that she wasn't Sammy.

She'll be fine.

Dad gives the two of them a nod and guides Gayle into the loveseat next to the window. He doesn't even bother to move away, just sits down next to her and opens his arms again; Gayle crawls almost into his lap, which should look ridiculous, but doesn't. She's eighteen years old, like she likes to point out, but she's still tiny compared to Dad and she fits into him like a child.

"You boys wanna have a seat?" Dad asks, weirdly formal.

Dean snags Sam's arm when Sam just stands there blinking a little stupidly, brain still offline even if the rest of him is up and running. He pulls his brother over to the couch and pushes him into it. A smile threatens to form when Sam actually falls onto the sofa, feet getting tangled with themselves even though he's sitting.

One look at Dad and that smile dies pretty quick.

Dad looks like he's gonna skin the both of them. Weird feeling. Dean'd managed to get away from getting that look for twenty-two years in this life. He sort of missed it.

"You're gonna tell me what that was," Dad says, and it's not a question.

Sam's still looking a little out of it, but he's coming around. Looks like Dean'd have to field this question. That's alright; means he gets the easy-peasy questions and Sam gets the hard ones.

"Dean?" Dad demands.

Dean sits down next to Sam, leans back and puts his feet on the coffee table. If he were Sam, he'd go into an explanation about what, exactly, a demon was. He is not, however, a pansy little girl, so he goes for the short and sweet answer.

"Demon," he says.

"A demon," Dad echoes, like he hadn't just seen one with his own two eyes.

Dean's not really sure what to make of that. He's still, after two decades, thinking of his dad as he'd been in that other life, not like he is now. It's downright freaky looking at a John who's skeptical over the existence of demons.

Doesn't help that Gayle's tucked under his arm, looking pretty much like a textbook perfect "after possession" picture.

"Yeah, Dad. A demon. You know: possession, raising hell, barfing pea soup, that sort of thing."

"You watch your mouth with me."

"Yessir." It slips out automatically, conditioned, in response to the drill-sergeant voice. It's not until he's said it that he realizes that, once again, he's fucked up his present timeline with his past one, because as far as he can remember, Dad's never used that tone around him. Here. There. Whatever.

Beside him, Sam wakes up a little bit more and narrows a slightly confused look his way. Poor kid's brains were probably getting ready to ooze out of his skull and Dean's gotta be confusing him.

Dad's looking at him a little funny too. "A demon," he finally says.

Gayle curls into him a little more, resolutely pressing her lips together. Dean's willing to bet she wants to whimper, and he feels a wave of affection almost knock him on his ass. He loved his little sister. He just maybe needed his ginormous fucker of a little brother that little bit more.

Sam stirs again, sits up straight finally and blinks at all of them. He takes a deep breath, lets it out slowly, and takes over. "That was a demon; pretty much everything you've ever heard about them is true. They come from hell, like to cause havoc and mayhem here. To do that, they usually possess a person. Now, sometimes it's for a specific reason, but a lot of the time it's not."

Dean's sort of grateful. He's not real good at telling people what's out there, even (especially) if it's his family that needs to be told. He's more of a shoot it and show 'em the corpse kind of guy.

"I'm guessin' that there was a real specific reason this time around," Dad mutters. "I let you in this house and I let you get away with tellin' me damn near nothing but lies. And you brought this to us."

He pins Sam with the kind of glare that the other Dad (fuck, he keeps confusing himself) wouldn't have used on Sam no matter what he was doing. The kind that said you're bad news and you're going down, without even a corpse left for someone to mourn.

Next to him, Sam shrinks back a little bit, his shoulders hunch into that familiar, absent slouch. Dean can't believe he thought he missed it, because it's like a punch to the gut. He's pushing himself to the edge of his seat before he can even think about it, leaning forward so he can glare, hard, at Dad.

"Don't you yell at him. It's not his fault," he grates out.

Sam shifts again and Dean's drops his feet from the table, casual like, and slams the heel of his boot against the toes of Sam's sneakers. Sam hisses under his breath, but Dean doesn't even turn to look at him, still staring Dad down.

Little bitch better not try to contradict him on that. It wasn't Sam's fault and it wasn't his fault either, no matter how much his insides keep trying to twist it around so it is: nobody's fault but the damn demon's.

He doesn't drop Dean's gaze and Dean can't find it in himself to drop his either. Sam's his goddamn responsibility and he'll be fucked before he lets one of the only people that matter to him tear him to pieces. It'd been different when it was actually Dad doing it, because Dad had _known_ Sammy, known when to stop short and when to keep pushing, even if he sometimes ignored that instinct. This Dad though...

Gayle ends the stalemate. "Dad," she says, "Sam's the one who... the thing, the demon, it was scared of Sam. He got it out of me." Her voice wobbles a little when she says it, all over the place, and Dean wants to hug her.

He thinks Dad might shoot him if he gets off the couch, though, so he settles for bumping his shoulder against Sam's when he leans back against the couch again. Manly hug.

They take a second for Gayle to rearrange herself against Dad's side again, and then Dad's talking. His focus is off Sam though, and that's really all Dean wanted, so he's good to go.

"You knew about this stuff," Dad says next. "The drawing on the floor...?"

"That's a devil's trap," Sam says. Right after Dean's gotten all the attention off him. He's a friggin' retard is what he is, and Dean sighs and kicks Sam's foot. Sam kicks him back, out of view of both Dad and Gayle. "It traps demons and makes them powerless."

"And you knew how to do this. At four." Dad's voice is skeptical at best. At worst? He's probably wondering if Dean's possessed himself.

Which, awesome to have healthy paranoia alive and all, but so not the time for it. "Yeah, well, I'm a quick study," he quipped, grinning. Dad looks like he's thinking about setting Gayle aside and getting up to kick his ass. Dean has that effect on most people.

"There's something going on here," Dad says, "And you're both lying to me about it." Dad says it like he used to say "date" when it came to Gayle, like they're some kind of scum crawling on their bellies for the express purpose of hurting his baby girl.

Dean's not sure if that hurts a bit or not. Probably. Somewhere where he wasn't concerned about Mom and Gayle and what this whole clusterfuck would mean for Sam.

Sam cracks his neck, like he's always done when he's nervous, and Dean relaxes a little with the familiar gesture. Some things, he doesn't mind returning. The hunched shoulders? He sort of wants to hit Dad for. It's a good thing neither of them had lived long enough for Sam to turn into some kind of giant hunched-back monster from all of that slouching.

Dad just narrows his eyes at the both of them, one hand smoothing Gayle's hair back from her face for a second. Just like Sam's, it falls right back into her eyes, Dean can't help but notice. They've got the same cheekbones too, the same wide smile, though it's a toss-up over whose smiles are rarer.

She's got Mom's stubborn streak and Dad's way of digging his heels in, but then, so does Sam. For a second, Dean thinks that Gayle's just Sam. With tits. Then he shakes it loose in horror.

Dad's voice jolts him out of that contemplation, thank God.

"I know you've been lying to us," he says. He nods his head at Sam in particular, though his look is for the both of them. "About pretty much everything, so why not this too?"

When Sam just looks confused (Dean can feel the drawn eyebrows, even if he can't see them), Dad elaborates with, "You're not Sam, are you? Does Dean even know that?"

"What?" Dean blurts out before he can help himself. Not Sam? Was Dad insane?

"James Taylor," Dad says, like it's some kind of twisted victory, and okay, how the freakin' hell had they gone from discussing demons to discussing Sam's kind of stupid ass wrong name? Dean's confused and says so.

"And that has... what to do with demons?" he asks. Sam rolls his eyes next to him. For a guy who'd been passed out on his shoulder ten minutes ago, Sam's kind of bitchy at him.

Then he remembers that bitchy's Sam's default setting and settles into the couch a little more.

Dad's winding up for something, maybe, opening his mouth again and Dean's just about to point out that they should be talking about how to get Mom back, not getting distracted on whatever weird thought is running through Dad's head, and then Gayle sits up a little bit.

"It called you Winchester," Gayle says faintly. She's got her head pressed into Dad's chest, her blonde hair fanned across her face, and Dean's heart just about stops right there. "It called you Winchester, Sam, like you're one of us and it _hated_ us because of you."

Dean can hear the blame in her voice and he bristles at it, all instincts. She's got no right laying that all on Sam's feet, like Sam's to blame for everything going on when he isn't.

It wasn't Sam's fault that the damn demons wanted their family.

Sam's frozen next to him. Across the room, Dad looks like he's speechless, eyes wide and a little crazy around the edges.

Dean's never really gotten why Sam thought it'd be a good idea to have a family somewhere that didn't know fuck all about what's out there, but even he feels a little sick to his stomach. There's a whole host of problems that might crop up with this, not the least of them being that Dad's more likely to blow a gasket than believe them and, even if he did accept that Sam was a Winchester, he'd want to know where the fuck he came from and Dean's...

Dean's not really ready to try to explain that other life to his family.

In the meantime though, Gayle's looking at them both with big, wounded eyes and Dean hates it.

"It called you Winchester," she repeats.

Sam's looking down at his hands like they're gonna tell him what to do. Dad's looking at him, mostly frozen, trying to process, and Dean opens his mouth.

Dean doesn't say, "That's because he is." He doesn't say that Sam's name is Samuel James Winchester, that he's his little brother and has been for two lifetimes. He doesn't say that the demons would have had a hard-on for this family with or without Sam, because sometimes he looks at Mom and sees the same not-quite-right brightness he's learned to recognize in Sam.

But he wants to.

Instead, he says, "Yeah, demons? Not so much on the sanity thing. I think it's all that time in hell."

Gayle sends him a furious look, full of anger and betrayal from underneath her lashes and behind her hair. She's going to clam up again, Dean can see it now, and he's just moved himself from marginally bearable, if still a crappy brother (and, man, that hurts, because he's a freakin' fabulous brother, even if only Sammy knows it), to number one on her shit list.

Dean can't bring himself to care all that much.

Sam's secret. Their secret.

He's not too sure Dad wouldn't freak and tell them to get lost if he found out about it, and right now? They really can't afford that. At the very least, him and Sam have got to have enough of Dad's trust for him to listen to them when they tell him how to keep both Dad and Gayle safe.

Dean's not bad at keeping secrets in the face of something like that.

You could ask Dad. He's good at keeping secrets. Even from the people he loves.

* * *

John's always had a sixth sense about people lying to him. Always. He'd known when he was eight that his daddy wouldn't be comin' back, no matter what his momma tried to feed him, and he'd known for months that this Sam kid wasn't what he looked like. He'd known that Dean wasn't quite normal, no matter how much he'd tried to reassure himself that he was, and well.

He damn well knows that Dean's lying though his ass right now.

"You can tell the truth," he tells Dean, low down and hard, like he's only ever used when one of his kids was gonna hurt themselves doing something stupid, "Or you can walk out that door right now. Your call."

Dean straightens on the coach, Sam straightening right along with him, but there's stubborn making Dean's spine rigid, not fear. John doesn't know why his boy shrugs that voice off his back and that's odd in and of itself. The few times he's snapped at Abby in that voice, she'd jumped and looked at him with tears in her eyes.

Dean just looks at him like it's a part of everyday life and gettin' more boring the more he uses it.

"I don't know what you think we're lying about, but we need to focus no more important things." Sam says, easily. John's noticed he does that, takes over for Dean and talks to him whenever John demands answers from his boy. It's disconcerting.

"Yeah, like savin' Mom," Dean pipes up. "So do we really need to play show and tell with our feelings right now, or can it wait until never?"

John has the strange, alarming urge to hit his son in the face for that crack. "You've got no business bringin' your mother into this, Dean Michael, and you know it."

Dean ducks his head a little, finally, looking slightly ashamed of himself, but then he just lifts his face up again and says, "Someone's gotta bring her up, Dad. And you're sure as hell not doing it. The longer you keep me and Sammy here, the longer it's gonna take to track her down."

Sam moves a little on the couch, rubs his forehead with the heel of his hand. If John's a judge of anything (and he is), the boy's gonna get somewhere even vaguely horizontal and check out for at least twelve hours. Which meant that anything Dean was sayin' about finding Mary was just air out of his ass, and John was ipissed/i that his son had kept this from him for goddamn fucking years.

If he'd known about it, if he'd been aware, he could have protected them better. Made sure Abby didn't ever have a reason to whimper like she'd done upstairs and that Mary couldn't have disappeared from the grocery store with a _thing_ ridin' shotgun.

Abby shifts next to him, still glaring and mumbling under her breath about lying bastard brothers, but John's not really paying attention to her. He's looking at Dean, just looking, because sometimes he feels like he doesn't know this boy he raised in the slightest.

Sometimes, he remembers that Dean woke up screaming at four and wanted his Sammy something fierce. And then he thinks about Abby calling Sam a Winchester, one of his kin if nothing else, and he looks a little harder at Sam's face to try to pick out familiar features before he can catch himself.

There's Dean's hazel eyes, he realizes with a shock, Mary's eyelashes and John's dimples peaking out of that grimace. He'd seen it before, when he'd first met the kid, but now that he's looking again, actually checking for features in common, he can see a certain tilt to his jaw, a way of holding himself that Dean and even Abby are echoing. Holy fuck.

"You related to us somehow?" he directs at Sam; he doesn't want to ask that question, doesn't want to think that question, because he's been nothing but faithful to his wife and he's the last of his side of the family and so is Mary. The kid's eighteen if he's a day, no older than Abby and definitely younger than Dean; John doesn't have a clue about how you'd explain his genetics.

He's not missin' any days, hasn't been drunk off his ass in almost twenty-five years, and he knows Mary gave birth to only a girl because he'd been in the delivery room with her.

But Sam'd come from somewhere and Abby'd sounded so sure, so ready to believe that Sam's a Winchester somehow, and he can hear the echo of the demon's voice calling them all Winchesters and staring at Sam as it'd said it.

He doesn't know how, but he knows that it's true. In some way.

"No," Sam says, without hesitation. He's lying. John knows it as soon as he says something. His eyes have gone sincere and trustworthy and he doesn't know how, but John knows that whenever Sam looks like that he's lying his ass off.

"No, I'm not." His mouth twists a little at the edges, like he's swallowing something sour, and he reaches up to brush some of his hair out of his face.

"I've got a brother," Sam says, finally, "But no other family."

Dean's mouth opens enough for him to mouth something to himself, curling up in a satisfied grin. John's not a hundred percent sure of it, but he thinks he makes out, "damn sure," rolling off Dean's tongue and that just seals it for him.

"You're lying again," he mutters. He'd have known it even if it wasn't looking him straight in the face, side by side with his son, and how could he have not seen it before? They don't look alike, not really, but... enough. Enough to make an observant person think and John's tired of being the unobservant one.

"What gave you that idea?" Abby pushes herself off of him, stubborn personality asserting itself. "They're lying about everything, Dad. But," she says, pausing, "They're not lying about Mom. That demon. It's got her."

"And we need to focus on that right about now, Dad, not Sam." Dean reaches over, crashes his fist into Sam's shoulder with enough force that Sam rocks with it, grimacing. The move looks practiced, nothing short of brothers giving each other a hard time, and if there hadn't been a demon in his house twenty minutes ago, he'd think he's crazy.

Sam's got some of their DNA swimming around in his veins. John's sure enough to make a bet of it and if he's got a choice, he only ever wagers on a sure thing.

John's not sure how he could have ever believed they were lovers.

"Fine. But you boys, the both of you, you're gonna give me an explanation afterwards and you're gonna tell the damn truth when you do. Is that clear?"

He's not sure why he uses that voice again, military tough. Sam and Dean, the both of them, utter quiet "Yessirs," without missing a beat, in stereo, like it's the most natural thing in the world. John feels a chill go down his spine and tries to shake it loose.

"What do we know?"

Sam's the one who starts talking. "Demons like to hide out for a while, make sure they've got a good grip on a person's body," he says, "It'll probably go to ground with Mo--Mary for a few days and then come out swinging."

Weird almost slip of the tongue there, John notices. The cold feeling attempts to claw up into his skull, give him more of a headache than he's already feeling, and Dean just looks him in the eye and dares him to say a word about it.

"The... the." Abby stops, shudders, draws a deep breath. Her chin goes up and her shoulders go back, sitting up ramrod straight like she's been taught to do for speeches and presentations, and John can see her confidence oozing back in. Good girl.

"The demon," she gets out, "It didn't know where Mom was. But it knows that she's going to come back here. They wanted to..." her voice trails off, just ends, and she goes white.

John doesn't need her to say what they want to do. He'd heard it with his own two ears, and so had everyone else in this room.

"It can damn well try," Dean says, "We Winchesters are hard to kill, though. Trust me."

Abby scoffs, loudly, at him. She tucks her hair behind her ears and spreads her hands on her knees. John can see them shaking a little bit.

Dean doesn't respond to that.

He's looking down at his fingers. John looks too, and they're twitching like they're aching for something, like his used to do when he woke up from a nightmare after 'Nam. Dean glances over at Sam for a second, and they trade glances, a wealth of information John doesn't even have a hope in hell of understanding, and then his boy's back to staring at his twitching fingers.

John's still trying to stomach the idea that there might be a kid out there, sitting in his living room, who shares genes with his two kids. He doesn't need to think about his son having held a gun before, let alone having held one long enough to develop an instinctive ache for it.

"We're not gonna let it hurt anyone," Sam murmurs at Abby.

She's still pissed to hell at the both of them, though she softens a little in Sam's direction. That crush is a major working factor in it, John thinks, and sees Dean grimace to himself in agreement.

John used to think the hidden grimacing and chortling was because his son was dating the man Abby had a crush on. Now he's wondering if it's because Dean knows something they don't, and he thinks the ugly word incest like it's a bullet across his brain.

"Oh, shit," Sam says suddenly.

John almost jumps, because he's sure as hell never heard Sam say a swear word in this house.

Sam's not paying any attention to him, though. He's turned slightly to dig his hand into Dean's jacket pocket, regardless of Dean's raised eyebrows. There's a second of stunned silence, and then Dean says, "Ah, dude?" and Sam makes a triumphant noise and pulls a phone out of Dean's pocket.

"Lily," he says at Dean, like that explains anything, like that explains why he's willin' to put finding Mary on hold. The boy starts dialing numbers on the phone like he's in some kind of race.

Apparently, to Dean, that one word did mean something, because he leans back and bangs his head against the couch cushion with a swear of his own.

Sam gives them all a quick smile, pushing numbers on the keypad fast enough that he looks like a blur. John can see Abby leaning forward out of the corner of his eye, but he's still watching Dean. Who's still hitting his head on the coach and mumbling around his breath about rain.

"Hey, it's Sam," Sam says into the phone. There's a pause where all three of them listen to him before Sam smiles a little and says, "Yeah, I know, and, no, he's not a kidnapper. Thanks for telling me though. No, no, he's really alright. He's... Dean. It's okay."

John's eyebrows start to climb into his hairline.

Dean slams his boots back up onto the coffee table and mumbles a little louder. It's all turned into indistinct swear words, though, so John tunes him out and leans forward a little more, trying to hear whoever it is Sam's talkin' to.

There's another tinny sound from the phone. Sam grimaces a little, deep dimples appearing on his cheeks, and says, "That sucks. Mr. Tinkles okay? Good."

"Look, I need a favor," Sam murmurs into the phone. "Can you get away for a few days and be in San Diego on the..." he stops and rubs his forehead, reaches over to tilt Dean's arm up to look at his watch.

Abby makes a disparaging comment about incest of all things, and John puts an arm around her shoulder and tells her to hush. Dean allows it for just long enough for Sam to apparently get the date from it, then pulls it back with a muttered, "Bitch."

"The eighteenth, I think," Sam continues. "No, it's the eighteenth. I saw it on the waitress's notebook. Yeah, I know, it's kind of a weird thing to go off of but if you--Scott. Let me finish, alright?"

On the other end of the line, Scott apparently takes a breather and lets Sam get through what he needs to do.

"You're going to look for a girl named Lily," Sam says. "She's got long blonde hair, hazel eyes, likes the eye shadow thing that's in right now." Sam pinches the bridge of his nose and his face screws up into something resembling pain. John's got no clue what the hell's going on, but he's starting to get that creeping ice feeling up his spine again.

That's stupid, he tells himself, because for all he knows Sam's just letting this Scott person know to meet a girl he's gonna have to bail on. He might have gotten upset over that if he still thought Dean was dating the boy, but he's leaning more and more towards the crazy conclusion that he keeps recognizing Sam's expressions because he sees them in his wife and daughter everyday, so.

Sam's talking again when he pulls himself out of that hole, eyes squeezed shut. Dean's leaning forward on the couch, not so much watching Sam as _hovering_ expectantly. John can't blame him. Boy looks like he's gonna take a header into the table. "She's going to be wearing, ah, a red long sleeved shirt with a black tank top on top. Jeans, I think. She's got these high-heeled boots, you can't miss them."

That's officially edging into creepy territory right there. Sam doesn't seem to care and Abby's just watching him with something like dawning comprehension in her face.

"No, I don't know her. Just, look? You gotta get there before the eighteenth. She's gonna kill her girlfriend on accident and you've gotta stop it. An address? Hold on a second, okay?" Sam abandons pinching his nose, tucks the phone between his shoulder and his ear, and just shoves the heels of both hands into his eyes, hard.

His face goes an interesting shade of gray-white before he takes a deep breath. "It's the Olive Garden on Carmel Mountain," he finally mutters. "Looks like it's the evening rush, so around five."

Dean puts his hand on Sam's shoulder and eases the phone out from under his face while Sam kind of whimpers under his breath. "You got all that, Sparky?" he asks tightly, and then hangs up the phone while someone's still talking on the other line.

John's hands are startin' to get itchy with just sitting here and it's really starting to sink in that Mary's _gone_. She's out there somewhere and he doesn't have the faintest fucking clue where she is.

He's going to start beating people soon. He's not too sure that Dean wouldn't beat him back if he touched Sam, though, and he's not about to hit one of his own kids. He tucks his hands under his thighs and takes several deep breaths, listening to Dean berate Sam.

"What's wrong with him?" Abby asks. She makes some kind of token effort to get the blatant hostility out of her voice. John leans a little harder on his hands. If she can do it, so can he.

"He's an idiot," Dean returns shortly. His voice is low and furious, but his hands are gentle on Sam's biceps, and he leans forward to say softly, "Hey, how about you go get in the car, lie down in the back?"

"'m fine, Dean," Sam says. He bats inefficiently at Dean's hands and when Dean just snorts at him, he lets his head loll back against the couch. "Head feels like it's gonna explode though."

"Abby," John interrupts, "Go get him some aspirin." No way in hell are either of them getting out of his sight until he's got more answers, a concrete way to get Mary back. A second later, though, he's got time to think through sending Abby anywhere by herself and so does she.

She's gone white again, fingers gripping the cushions hard enough that they creak.

John's relieved when Dean lets out a curt, "Won't help," in response to his suggestion. He doesn't want his baby girl out of his sight either.

"Got some Excedrin, Sammy," Dean offers a second later, "You missed your coffee this morning 'cause you puked like a girl when that first vision hit."

"Don't say puke," Sam whispers.

Dean snorts out a half-laugh and goes digging through his pockets. When he said he had Excedrin, he wasn't lyin', John figures. The bottle of pills comes out of an inner pocket, the childproof lid replaced with what looks like plastic wrap held on with a rubber band.

"Visions," Abby repeats flatly.

Dean's not really paying attention to her, since he's wrestling his plastic wrap off the bottle and handing Sam a flask of... something at the same time. John hopes to God that's water he's handing over and not whiskey.

"Visions," Dean says when he's got the "lid" off. "Knock you on your ass, see the future type deal. Like in that show about that pansy-ass vampire detective guy. Only Sam's not as pretty as the chick who had visions in there."

Sam downs the flask and the pills with a mutter of that sounds a lot like, "Jeez, why don't you just Christo me and get it over with."

Dean gives him a quick smile and leans around him to stare at both John and Abby. "And I swear to God if either of you says something about how we should have told you, I'm gonna start swingin'."

"I couldn't care less what's wrong with him," John says, and, alright, he's lying, because there's still that same old feeling of weirdness invading the room, but goddamnit, Mary was out there somewhere and he didn't have time to pick apart secrets he didn't really want to know, "Just tell me what we're gonna be doing and you guys can get gone."

He almost sounds like he's kicking Dean out of the house. He sees Dean notice it too, squeezing Sam's shoulder and ducking his head a little bit, but John doesn't try to take it back. After the day he's had, he figures he can get away with one or two rash decisions.

Abby smiles next to him. He can see it out of the corner of his eye and he swallows hard. God, his girl could hold a grudge. And his boy was stupid. All she needed was a fucking hug, an, "I thought about you while I was gone," and she'd melt into jelly and be his forever.

"Tough crowd," Dean says instead.

"Mary's gone to ground," Sam says softly. He's still got his head cradled in his hands, breathing heavy through his mouth, and he's leaning against Dean like he can't support his own weight. "We've got a few days to figure out how we're going to find her."

"Not good enough," John snaps at the both of them.

At the same time, Abby says, "We can't just leave her possessed by one of those _things_!" She's got her arms wrapped around herself again and John's hurting to think of his Mary still under the control of something that'd shaken Abby so much.

Sam shifts like he feels guilty. Dean just looks at him.

He's not backing down, but he's not really defiant either, just some unholy mix of the two. He's got his shoulder slightly in front of Sam's, like he's protecting the other kid from John; like there's something in John he sees that makes it worthwhile to protect Sam from. That just makes John want to hit the both of them.

"It's gonna have to be, Dad," Dean says simply.

* * *

He's never actually tried to call a vision back, so he thinks it's pretty understandable when after watching Dad and Dean duke it out in the living room, he shambles towards the kitchen, calmly checks to see if the garbage can has a bag (it does, go him), and throws up in it.

He's tall enough to even reach the top of it while slumped on his knees. That's not really an accomplishment, because he's a shrimp compared to how tall he's going to be, but he'll take what he can get right now. Up to and including being vaguely, sickly proud that he can reach the garbage can without standing up.

Sam lets out a weak little chuckle around the bile in his mouth.

Then he throws up some more.

"Easy," Dean says from behind him.

Sam wants to tell him that he can take it easy himself when his head feels like it's going to explode; however, he's still vomiting into the trash and Dean's hand is sort of soothing on the back of his neck. It squeezes once, just the right amount of pressure. Sam swears he can feel the urge to barf retreating because of it.

Unfortunately, the headache doesn't go with it. He's managed to puke up his pain pills too, if the half-digested white blobs he can see floating in the green-yellow pile are any indication.

He cuts his eyes away from the vomit before he starts up again.

Dean, big brother of the century, let alone the year, hands him a glass of water (where'd he get it from?) and helps him to his feet while he swishes a mouthful around. The taste lingers at the back of his teeth even after he spits, but that's something he can live with.

Dean hands him two more pills and another glass of water. Sam wants to care about how he seems to be pulling those out of nowhere, but his head fucking hurts and he just wants it to stop. No more vision-forcing.

Sam goes to throw the pills back when Dean stops his hand.

He squints blearily at his brother and decides that whichever one of him is real, his best brother of the century award is getting taken away. There are weird _colors_ starting to spread across his vision; Sam's had enough concussions to know that's really not a good thing. He wants his drugs and he wants the Impala.

Preferably with Dean running the engine so it rumbles at him.

"Take three," Dean finally says. He pries open Sam's hand (he's got a deathgrip on those pills), shakes out another pill into his open palm, and folds his fingers back over it. "Think you can get those in yourself or you need me to get a spoon of jelly?"

He's not six. He hadn't had anyone to give him medicine with jelly when he was six, anyway. Except that Dean'd done it for years, until he was twelve and he got sick while Dean was out having fun with some girl and Dad told him he was old enough to swallow pills whole now.

That didn't happen in this life though, and great, there goes the confusion setting in. Just like Abby didn't happen in that other life.

"Guess not," Dean mutters.

Dean can go to hell. His head throbs and for a second he's looking at the Olive Garden sign in San Diego, with a clear view of the street sign in the background. It would have been nice if he'd gotten that from the vision the first time around.

"Jesus, Sammy, focus here."

Sam cracks open an eye, sees the swirl of weird, molten colors that might represent Dean if he's inclined to really squint and tilt his head sideways. Which he's not. Because he wants to keep down the water he's managed to swallow.

And the pills Dean's pushing into his mouth with an exaggerated mumble about... something under his breath.

He closes his eyes and swallows them dry. Dean guides his hand around a glass, then pushes the glass up towards his face with a huff when all he does is sort of hold onto it. Even his arms are aching at this point, like his head's decided to share the wealth.

"You need more water?" he hears Dad rumble from somewhere close by.

Before he even thinks about it, he mumbles, "No, 'm good, Dad."

The silence that follows that feels pretty good. He sways on his feet, reaches out for the nearest stationary object, and thinks about maybe going to find the Impala.

"Dude," Dean says after a few seconds.

His voice is right next to Sam's head, maybe standing behind his shoulder. Sam lets out an unhappy noise when Dean's voice bounces around in his head, merging with the dying gutter-wheeze of Lily's girlfriend, and shifts away from him slightly.

The room does a spinning move that leaves Sam thinking of puking again.

A girl's voice next, over to the left: "Dad?" She sounds pissy. Abby's always that way, even if Sam's kind of fuzzy on who, exactly, Abby is at the moment. Lily's screaming in his head. It hurts.

"He's confused," Dean shoots back.

Sam winces harder, squeezing his eyes shut again. "Need to lay down, Dean," he mutters.

"I kind of got that, man. You hallucinating? Dead give away."

He scrunches his eyes together, offended. "I'm not hallucinating," he says and even he can hear the whine in his voice. He always gets like this with headaches or head wounds.

"Yeah, you sort of are."

A hand catches his shoulder (he really hopes it belongs to Dean) and steers him gently. He manages not to trip on his feet like Dean's always accusing him of doing. He decides that's a point for him and tells Lily to be quiet.

* * *

Maneuvering six feet of drowsy, confused, babbling little brother down some steps is never Dean's idea of a good time. Especially when said six feet of brother has just landed them so deeply into Dad's suspicion they're never gonna get out again.

Sam makes a pathetic noise under his breath when Dean leans him against the porch railing. He's gotta take a minute, tackle those steps in his head before he's willing to try it with Sam's goofy, accident prone weight. He shushes his brother absently while he plots it out.

"I can help you with that, son," Dad says from behind him. It sounds almost like a peace offering. Almost. But it sort of also sounds like Dad might just let Sam bounce his head on the cement a few times just because.

Dean's not real keen on letting Dad anywhere near Sam right now. After that slip in the kitchen and another rambling anecdote on the merits of pill taking with jelly versus dry swallowing, he's not sure that's a bang up idea.

Dad's probably hoping for more little insights into the way Sam's mind works and he's already suspicious as fuck about where Sam comes from.

Thing is, though, that Sam's not exactly light, even if he looks like a famine relief poster at this stage of the random ass growth spurt that should be hitting any day now. And dragging his brother down those steps is sort of daunting, even in his own head. If he doesn't have to do it by himself, he doesn't really want to.

Sam mumbles something under his breath that might be, "ribbons," or maybe he's babbling about monkeys. Dean doesn't really know. He nudges Sam's shoulder a little bit, just enough to get his attention and make him shut up.

His brother turns his head towards him, but doesn't open his eyes.

"Yeah," Dean says after he realizes that. Getting a mostly comatose Sam down some stairs with his eyes closed, by himself? Not gonna happen without serious injury or dragging. "Could use the help."

Gayle, hovering in the background with her arms crossed, looks about ten seconds away from crying despite her best efforts whenever she gets more than a few feet away from Dad. So he'd have two more people helping. Maybe. He's not sure _she_ wouldn't cop a feel, belief in Sam being related to them or not.

Weird kid. If you're gonna commit incest, Dean's definitely the hotter choice.

"You are not," Sam says.

Fucker. Dean knew he could read minds if he tried. Dean hopes it gives him a worse headache. "Alright, gigantor, up," he says, and heaves Sam back upright.

Dad tucks himself under Sam's other arm. Sam's head turns his way, a little, and Dean can see his eyebrows scrunch up in consternation. "Dean?" he asks softly, "Dad's dead. Who's...?"

"You have got to keep your big mouth shut, Sam," Dean sighs. He's not gonna play damage control anymore. They can go sack out in their motel room and hide from Dad until a random memory spell takes this whole goddamn day from him and Gayle both.

Sam quiets down after that, leans his head a little more towards Dean and hisses under his breath every other step. Gayle trails behind them like a dog on a leash.

Dean realizes he might have inadvertently called his sister a bitch just as they've reached the Impala.

"Front or back, Sam?" he asks. He's thinking the back seat would be best for him, but damned if he's gonna fight Sam on it if he really, really wants to sit in the passenger side.

Dad looks at him like he's insane. "He doesn't even know where he is right now, Dean. Or who he's with," that sounds a mite desperate to Dean, but who's he to stand in the way of denial, "And you're gonna give the boy a choice?"

"Sammy gets a little pissy if you force him into doin' stuff. Even if it's for his own good." Dean's thought about explaining that to Dad before this, of course. It's just that last time he'd given serious thought to it he was about four years older than he is now and had a hell of a lot more scars on him.

"He's kinda like Gayle," he offers when Dad just gives him a suspicious look.

Then he thinks, 'Oh, shit. Yeah, Dean, good call there, bringin' attention to how much your sister and your secret brother from another lifetime/universe/thing have in common. Awesome.'

Sam says, very softly, "Backseat."

"Good choice, Sam," Dean grunts. Sometimes, Sam shows that he's got the good sense God gave little green apples. Not that apples had good sense or anything.

His brother takes a deep breath and leans further towards Dean. He takes that as his cue to nod a little frantically at Dad, because Sam's heavy, the fucker, and he doesn't want to hold onto all his weight for long.

"Can you get the door?" he asks. He drops his arm from Sam's shoulders to around his waist, hitching him up as he starts to go a little more boneless. "Kind of got my hands full, here."

Which is true. Sam's putting almost all of his weight on him now, bony shoulder and hip jabbing uncomfortably into Dean's skin. He could, he supposes, push him over to lean on Dad, but he doesn't think Dad'd appreciate it all that much.

Plus, Sam? Would totally pitch a shitfit if Dean tried to make Dad hold him while he opened the door. He's a little out of it. He'd probably think Dad was a shapeshifter or a zombie with their luck and hurt himself trying to go for the gun in the back of his pants.

"I got it," Gayle mutters.

She shoves her way in between him and the Impala's backdoor, managing to elbow Dean in the guts while she's at it. He has to hand it to her, she's kind of bitchy. Like, Sam bitchy even. Even though Sam knew enough to put something behind an elbow to the gut if he wanted it to hurt.

The minute the door creaks open, Dean finds his hands full of suddenly eager, struggling little brother. What the hell? He knows Sam's got a sudden, healthy, wonderful fascination with his car, to the point that he's even offered to _wax it_ once or twice, but trying to ditch him in favor of his baby? That's a little cold.

Dean simultaneously raises an eyebrow and grapples to keep his dingus brother upright.

Sam manages to pull away completely away from Dad with little more than a tug. Yeah, Dean's real glad he asked for Dad's help. Friggin' useless is what he is. Then he feels terrible enough for thinking that that he's automatically turning a little bit to shoot Dad an apologetic look and Sam manages to hit him with one bony, flailing elbow in exactly the way Abby had been aiming for.

The breath rushes out of his lungs in one long, violent exhale. Somewhere behind him, he can hear Gayle make a surprised, pleased little chuckle. He's gonna strangle her. Mean girl. Dean didn't help raise her to be such a little twit.

While he's thinking that, Sam takes a swan dive into the backseat of the Impala.

Dean figures he deserves the headache that sparks. He twitches his arm, the one not currently protecting his middle as he tries to wheeze in some air, and slams the back door on Sam's whimpery little moans before he can start to feel sorry for the little bitch. His own damn fault.

He curls around his middle and rests his forehead against the door of the Impala. The paint's hot under his head, but that doesn't really help him breathe. No panicking, he reminds himself. You and Sam'd done this to each other for fun when you were younger. Wait for it.

Stupid Sam. "No patience," he wheezes out with the first precious lungful of beautiful air.

Dad's got one hand flat on his back, the other on his chest, over his diaphragm. Not that Dean doesn't appreciate the sentiment, but he could have used the help keeping Sammy still in the first place. He bats Dad's hands away with a breathy sound.

A breathy sound that almost sounds like girl sex noises. Huh.

"Fine, Dad," he grunts. When he hears Gayle snort again, he turns his head to the side a little and narrows a glare her way. "You be quiet," he growls out.

Her eyes widen a little bit and he belatedly remembers that he'd never talked to her like that.

Fuck it, he needs to leave before he says or does something he's really gonna regret. Like telling Dad that he's looking at his son like he's the Anti-Christ when they just saved Gayle's goddamn life. Or he makes Gayle stand in the corner like he'd done when Sam was bad when he was little.

He pats Dad on the shoulder (very manly), gives Gayle a kind of grimacing smile that he really hopes doesn't look as homicidal as he's feeling towards her and her girly attitude problems, and walks around to the driver's side.

If he walks fast enough that it almost qualifies as a run, well, Sam's sort of out of it in the back seat, so it's not like he's gonna hear any shit from him about it.

"Dean," Dad calls.

"Yeah?" Dean looks up from the mad dash (fine, he admits it) he's got goin' for him.

Dad's leaning against the top of the car, hands folded on her hood. Dean knows enough to see himself in that pose, Sam too, if he's perfectly honest, and that's his family, right there. Right here. Gayle glowering over Dad's shoulder and Sam in the back, trying not to hurl.

And something's got his Mom.

"You take care of yourself, alright?" Dad says.

"Always do," Dean tells him. "We'll be back in a few days."

It's an outright lie, because like hell is he gonna let something come get the family he's got left, even if it's riding around in his mother. He and Sam are gonna track that thing down and exorcise its ass before it can get anywhere near Dad or Gayle again.

That's just facts. Doesn't mean Dad would see it that way.

Dad nods like it means something and taps the hood of the car twice. That's something else Dean can recognize and it makes his throat feel suspiciously lumpy. Growin' up with a girl? Really had made him into a squishy princess G.I. Joe doll.

Dean opens the Impala's door and climbs on it. He hadn't gotten the keys out of his pocket before he sat down, so he has to spend a good minute wiggling around like a retard trying to fish his keys out of his back pocket. He doesn't even know why he put the damn things there anyway; they stab him in the ass when they're in that pocket.

When he starts up the engine, three things happen at once. Dad backs up, puts his arm around Gayle and stands there looking two inches short of devastated. Dean's throat clamps up a little tighter. And Sam lets out this sound, the same kind of noise he'd made when he was little and he'd just crawled into bed and put his cold feet all over Dean's warm legs.

Satisfied, maybe. Happy.

Guess which one of those three things he focuses on.

"You good back there, Sam?" he asks.

There's a vague mumble from the backseat and a slightly clearer, "Drive."

Bossy shit.

* * *

Sam likes to curl up in the Impala. Not really for the reasons Dean thinks he does, although that's part of it. He likes the way the Impala rocks and rumbles, likes the car no matter how much he bitches about it. She'd been his cradle in his last lifetime, his battle ground with Dean when he'd been a teenager, arms and legs cracking into each other hard enough to leave bruises when they'd fought over the front seat hard enough that Dad put them both in the back

He turns his face into the leather seats, presses it hard between the cushions in an attempt to get it to stop hurting. Doesn't help, but it doesn't hurt either and the cool leather feels nice against his skin. Even if it does start to heat up as soon as he touches it. It doesn't really smell like it should, not as much blood and sulfur and holy water spilled in it, but it's still home.

If he concentrates really hard, enough that he can feel the headache getting much, much worse somewhere in his near future, the Impala will give up her memories to him. It's nothing really concrete, just sounds and some sights.

Metallica on this occasion, when Dean had his head resting on the steering wheel, looking two minutes away from either crying or ranting furiously to himself. Something soft and soothing when Mom's driving her, two car seats in the back seat even though Dean looks murderous at being confined to one and is whining that classic cars aren't even supposed to have seatbelts, anyway.

He doesn't get many memories of Abby, like the Impala's just decided arbitrarily that she's not someone that's going to be riding in her often. Sam smiles a little into the seats when he gets an image of her. She's a little under twelve, maybe, with blonde hair and the habitual embarrassment of having doting parents and a big brother that was obsessive about keeping her safe. She seems sweet, Sam decides, up until she tells Dean that she didn't need him and he was a freak, and wouldn't he just leave her alone?

Sam'd said things like that sometimes. Once or twice he'd even meant it, but that was before he understood how stupidly fragile Dean was when it came to him. And, yeah, there's a little bit of hurt glimmering out of his brother's eyes before he hides it, but there's no real devastation.

When he gets tired of coaxing memories out of the Impala, he gives her some of his to make it even. He only ever does it when he's so tired he can't sleep or when he needs something to take his mind off his hurts, but. There it is. He twines the memory of eighteen years of loneliness and determination into her seats and follows it up with all the little things that had made it bearable.

It's not making his headache better, but he's feeling it less. The Impala rumbles under him like she's alive, just an extension of Dean's overprotectiveness as his brother turns down his music and hums softly along. Sam smiles a little bit more, feeling drowsier than he'd been in the living room back there.

He gives her the memory of seeing the Grand Canyon when he was thirteen, a detour he made specifically for Dean, because they never had done it in that last lifetime. They're supposed to do it soon in this one, and he's sure she'll store that memory somewhere for them too.

He shows her Jess, sixteen years old and freckled, hitting the shoulder of one of her brothers while Sam walks behind her and smiles. There's a thousand and one good things that have happened to him in this life, but he finds himself starting to feed her the other memories too.

They're kind of yellow with age in his head, full of the holes that come after the events been in the past for a lot of years. But they're still there. Dean saying he was proud of him, Dad saying that there had been a college fund once, the way Mom had fought a poltergeist off for them, gorgeous and strong even when the fire came again. The hundred and one things he'd been thankful for in that lifetime, most of them beginning with D and ending with N.

Dean's not psychic at all. But Sam's communing with the Impala in the backseat, and Dean suddenly gets this little smile on his face, like he can feel it, and he starts humming just that little bit louder. Sam presses his face harder into the seat and wonders if she's going to take this memory for herself too, something to share later when Sam's feeling down.

He wishes, sometimes, that he could share this with Dean. He'd love it.

* * *

John spends the rest of the day walking through the house like a ghost. Abby trails behind him the entire way, nonchalantly picking up knickknacks and opening books in whatever room he's decided to explore this time.

He might be a little stunned still, but he's still thinking. He's _looking_ for some of the weird things he remembers Dean doing as a kid, the marks and destructive behavior that he and Mary had tried so hard to understand.

Here there's scratches in the door jams, deliberate and geometric. Under his and Mary's bed are dozens of little shells, gold and green, see-through and delicate. Under Abby's, someone (Dean) has pounded nails around the whole area of it, a solid line of iron. How the hell Dean'd managed to do that without anyone hearing it is a mystery.

There's rosemary hanging in the bathroom and wood of the windowsills has started to warp around all the salt that's been ground into the grain.

Abby's got a rosary hanging like a mobile above her bed. John's not even sure she sees it anymore; she sure as hell would have ripped it off if she was thinking about it. As it is, she just stands in the doorway as he touches things in her room.

"Dean gave that to me," she says after a second.

"Stole it from the preacher," John says right back.

Just because he never admitted to knowing where it came from didn't mean he didn't actually know. He just hadn't seen the harm in him taking it. After all, if the boy had wanted to pray that much, who was he to stand in the way?

A few months after he's come back, Dean's even gone back to the habit of stashing bottles of water all over the damn house. While he's looking for them, really looking, John finds two under the couch, three hiding in the kitchen cabinets, one in the medicine cabinet above the downstairs bathroom sink. Two more are tucked in the closet of Abby's room and Dean's old room?

Veritable forest of weird shit in it.

On a hunch, John pulls back the rug that's been on Dean's floor for as long as he can remember. There's nothing under it though, and he doesn't know whether to breathe out a sigh or relief or one of frustration.

Abby comes to stand beside him. "He's always been sort of crazy," she mutters. "We used to talk gibberish over my bath at night, did you know that? I think I can even remember some of it."

"Your brother's been weird for a good long while," John responds absently. His eyes flit around the room, cataloguing the things that have found themselves a home since his boy came back. There's a surprising amount of things he just _does not understand_ scattered on the surfaces of the room.

He lifts up a piece of paper with a sketchy drawing of a monster on it, all teeth and hollow pits for eyes, and flips it over. "Changeling," the paper says in messy caps, the A looking more like a star than an actual letter. It's not Dean's handwriting.

Which meant it was Sam's.

"Creepy," Abby murmurs at his back. John's inclined to agree.

Under that page are sheaves of other ones, just random sketches of increasingly vile looking monsters, even if the artist, for the most part, stunk at drawing. They never have more than one word on the back.

"Dad?" Abby says suddenly.

John's contemplating the strangely geometric drawing of a man, the word "wendigo" scrawled across the back so messily that he's not even sure that's what it says. He looks up from the drawing, tilting his face a little to keep an eye on it even as he looks at Abby. "Yeah, baby girl?"

"Do you think that... you think Dean and Sam are tellin' the truth?"

"Depends. I think they're bein' truthful about finding Mary. But they're both obviously lying their asses off about everything else and I don't trust that Sam boy as far as I could throw him."

Abby fidgets with her fingers, pinching her fingertips as she bites her lip. "The demon really hated Sam. And it was scared of him. And I know you don't believe me, Daddy," secret weapon right there, because Abby knows John's a sucker for her callin' him Daddy, "But when it was--when it was inside of me, it said that it was going to kill us first and save Sam's brother for last.

"That's Dean, isn't it?" She sounds small and defeated when she says it, like that just cost her whatever backbone was holdin' her up after that godawful thing was ripped out of her. John's heart aches.

John folds his arms around her small, shaking shoulders and pulls her into his chest. Her head tucks under his chin, her face hiding in the hollow of his throat.

"Easy, easy," he says. He's been waiting for this, for her to have that breakdown she's been heading towards ever since she made herself pull together so she could be vicious at Dean. She wouldn't have done it where Dean could see her because she's too damn proud to let her big brother see her vulnerable anymore.

She sighs wetly. "I'm scared, Daddy," she whispers. "I'm scared."

"Nothing to be scared of, Abby," he tells her.

That's a flat out lie. He usually doesn't advocate lying to his children, but when one of them's sobbing into his shirt and he doesn't have his wife to soften the blow? Hell yeah he's willing to make little white lies. He'll do his damnedest to make sure they don't turn into big black lies.

Abby hiccups a little into his shirt, hands pressed between them in a self-hug. She got that from Mary, though God knows why, since she's always had someone willin' to pick her up and cuddle away her booboos. Dean'd been her favorite go to for that for years.

He rests his cheek on top of her blonde head and sighs. His eyes drift around the room again, looking for something to ground himself, and they alight on the ceiling. For a second, he squints at it, not sure he's seeing what he thinks he's seeing, and then he takes a sudden, startled breath.

There's something on the ceiling. Something big. Painted in white, big as the whole damn ceiling is, and complicated. It's all gently curving lines and then stark, straight ones, script wondering the perimeter of the circle so that it looks like one eternal phrase, ended right where it began.

It's so complicated, in fact, that it takes John half a moment of staring at it to see what it is.

There's a devil's trap on the ceiling. A hell of a lot more to it than the simple one downstairs, but there all the same.

It's big enough to cover the entire damn bedroom and John hates himself for the relief that comes from knowing both Sam and Dean have been in and out of this room before.

* * *

Two days after Sam managed to give himself the migraine to end all migraines, he can finally inch his way out of bed without looking for the shotgun to end his misery. He slowly reaches out to pick up the glass of water on the bedside table and lets a relieved smile bloom when it doesn't cause anything but a mild twinge.

He can even turn his head to look at his brother, something that was impossible yesterday.

"What have we learned?" Dean asks.

His head's under the pillow and he's facedown, so it comes out sounding something like what Sam would imagine a bulldog attempting to talk would sound like. It's only years of interpreting his brother's speech that lets him make that out.

Sam finishes the glass of water and sets it gently back down. "No more visions," he tells Dean.

Dean's already asleep again.

Sam heaves himself to his feet; there's a few flashes of white that coalesce into what look like little, iridescent white worms crawling across his vision. Sam tilts his head to the side, because it doesn't hurt and he's not dizzy, but the white worms continue to invade his sight.

"Huh," he says. That's a little different.

Dean snuffles in his bed and manages to convey, "Shut up, _Sam_ ," without actually waking up.

Sam shifts a little, but that just seems to make his vision worse, so stands very still. After a few seconds, they start to go away, fading until he's just got one or two he's trying to track across his field of vision. It doesn't really work.

He waits until they disappear completely, and makes a beeline for the bathroom. He hasn't showered since the night before all the visions hit. He's feeling grungy and disgusting.

They've been parked in the motel that entire time, Dean quietly sitting on the bed next to him, checking for demonic omens and clicking away at the keyboard. Half the time, Sam was blearily sure that he was just looking at porn, but the other half of the time, he was working.

Or he was sacked out in a chair with the remote in his hand, TV on silent.

He knows Dean was working. He's just not sure he wasn't reading/watching porn at the same time.

"Same difference, bitch," Dean mutters when Sam's done in the shower and brings it up.

Sam sits on the edge of his own bed, toweling his hair dry, and just stares at the Dean-shaped lump on the bed.

After a couple seconds, it starts shifting. A couple more seconds, during which Sam's graduated from drying his hair to just leaving the towel draped over his head so he can stare harder, and Dean's hand appears from under the blanket, middle finger extended.

When Sam just keeps right on staring at him, Dean makes a cranky sound and lets his hand flop back onto the bed. "You've been out of it for days, Sam," he mutters into his bedding, "Do we really gotta do this _now_?"

"Yeah," Sam says. He doesn't say anything about wasted days; he wouldn't have been able to function yesterday morning and they both know it. Push came to shove, Dean would have laid down salt lines and taken off to hunt the demon down by himself.

Sam tries not to think about that.

"You know what I found while you were doing your sleeping beauty impression?" Dean pokes his head out from under his pillow and blinks. "Whole fat lot of nothing, that's what. If this thing's gettin' ready to strike, I've no goddamn clue where it's gonna be."

Dean runs one hand through his hair, making it stick up even more wildly that it already is, and sits up. "This? Officially blows, man." He squints in Sam's direction. "You got anything?"

"I'm not looking for her with my mind," Sam deadpans.

He knows that Dean knows he'll see her if she starts killing people. Sam doesn't really see a need to bring it up for no reason. He's kind of hoping that they find her any other way _besides_ the information getting branded into his head. He'd really had enough of pain for right now.

"Pfft," Dean mutters. "Chicken wuss. What's a little headache among family, huh?"

"You want to wear puked on clothes?" Sam discovered he'd upchucked on fully two-thirds of their shared wardrobe when he went looking for some clean clothes to wear.

"Nah, I'll pass."

Dean stands up, wobbles on his feet a little because he's never been good with mornings when a demonic wake-up call wasn't involved in some way. "Dad wants us to go back home," he says, stretching. He scratches at his stomach before he starts to scrounge around for his shirt.

Sam can see it hanging off the foot of the bed, so he points it out and waits for Dean to pull it on before he asks, "So where are we going instead?"

"Oh, we'll be around," Dean says. He tosses a grin Sam's way, already pawing through the clean clothes on the table to find another shirt. "We'll just be somewhere Dad and my little hellspawn sister can see us."

"You shouldn't talk about Abigail like that," Sam says immediately. Especially not after she'd been possessed.

"Uh-huh. You've seen her, right? And how much she wants to load my hide up with buckshot?"

Sam pinches the bridge of his nose. He hopes that vague pressure in the back of his skull is not another vision waiting for the right second to strike. "That's because you're sort of a dick, Dean," he says before he really stops to think about it, "You left her with a _note_ and then didn't even apologize for leaving."

"Well, hey, I'm glad you're on your high horse there, Sammy, since you'd've never done that," Dean says. There's an edge to his voice, and Sam admits to himself that he's confused as all hell until he backtracks and realizes what he'd been talking about.

Autopilot? Not his friend. Autopilot, in fact, tends to get him in a lot of trouble.

Dean sniffs a shirt, makes a face, wads it back up, and throws it on the table. "Oh, wait. I didn't even get a note the second time you tried to ditch me, did I?"

That's fair, Sam concedes. He drops his eyes away from Dean for a minute, fiddling with the blankets. "You gonna bring that up _every time_ I piss you off?" he asks. It worked, he hated to admit. Nothing made him feel shittier faster than Dean looking at him like he'd tried to kill a baby.

Or leave him. Same difference, for his brother.

"Whatever," Dean says. Which was as good as a yes. Damnit.

* * *

They decide to leave town after they hit the laundry mat. It's a solid plan, Dean thinks, because not only are the shirts he's wearing smelling a little ripe, but everything else in the duffle has the crusted up, skank-ass remains of anything Sam's ever eaten. Including the stuff he'd wolfed down another life ago. That's just how much his brother had puked.

In revenge for Sam having upchucked on almost every single clean piece of clothing they own, Dean gives him the handful of change he finds in his pocket, digs out a twenty, and leaves him to do it by himself.

Hey, that's just poetic justice, alright? Nothing wrong with that.

Besides, Sammy bitching? Music to his ears.

Sam bitches while he separates out the whites, the colors, and the jeans, something that Dean never bothers with and Sam is completely anal about; Dean'd gotten chewed out a few weeks ago for letting something blue slip in with the whites even though the damn thing had only turned their underwear a more manly color.

His dork of a brother had taken a hard earned twenty (even if it might have been Sam's hard earned twenty), and picked up another package of briefs. Dean had shrugged at the time and claimed all the blue ones for his own, after a thorough washing. Hey, they may share most of their clothes, but Dean draws the line at underwear. No way is he putting on something that's had Sam's ass and balls in it.

End product is that Sam's got a small pile of whites on one washer consisting almost entirely of socks and underwear, one pile of jeans that stink to hell, and three piles of painstakingly sorted blues, greens, and reds.

He's never quite figured out _why_ Sam spazzes about laundry, since he hadn't cared before he'd left in that other life and hadn't really cared that much after he'd come back either. It's just a Sam quirk from this time around.

"Dude," Sam says.

Dean looks up from the magazine he's been reading, ready to defend his reading choice if he has to. Cosmo had some freakin' hot chicks in it sometimes.

Sam's not paying any attention to him though. He's holding up a shirt in mild horror, looking at it like he's never seen it before. Dean squints at it right along with him, trying to place it. It's the hole in the hem that gives it away; Dean's hemmed the damn thing enough to know which shirt it is.

Dean knows for a fact Sam stole it two days ago, right after Dean'd worn it and decided it was clean enough for a second go around.

"What color is this?" Sam asks, voice hitting that lovely range that makes him sound like a six year old girl faced with icky boy cooties.

Dean squints at it a little bit, trying to remember what color it might have been originally. "Puce?" he guesses. He doesn't have the slightest clue what the hell color puce is, but it's a good enough word for it.

The shirt's kind of this unholy mix of green and purple. It's got this weird pink sheen going for it too, like a pixie had bled all over it and then peed on it for good measure. On the sleeve, Dean can see a splotch of orange.

Quite frankly, he doesn't know what the fuck happened to it to make it that color. It used to be a nice, sedate blue.

"Puce is purple-red, Dean," Sam mutters. Dean makes a huh face, thinking, hey, you learn something new everyday, and goes back to reading his magazine. Let Sam have his mini-freak-out in peace.

"This is..." Sam trails off. "It's. I don't think they've invented a name for this color, Dean."

There's an article in the magazine titled, "How to tell if your man is really into you." Dean skips it. That's obviously for women with inferior lovers. He? Is a god in bed.

When Sam just keeps mumbling to himself about colors, Dean sighs and turns the page until he finds a beer ad. "You are such a _little girl_ , Sam," he says. "Just put it in your red pile and stop flipping the fuck out, man."

He's not looking, but Dean knows Sam's just pulled a bitchface of epic proportions on him. "It's not red!" he practically shouts.

Dean waves at the nice people slowly inching away from the crazy men in the laundry mat and hisses, "Then put it with the green shit! It's not that hard, Sam," out of the corner of his mouth. Christ. Drama queen.

Sam keeps right on holding the shirt up, except he starts talking directly to _it_ instead of Dean, asking it what color it is. And which one of them got more crazy people looks? Life was not fair.

See, this is why Dean usually got stuck doing the laundry. Sam would flip out about something or other, how this sock was brown and not white, even if it had _originally_ been white, and what pile would it go into? Sam'd deliberate about it so damn long, and so damn hard, that they'd be there for half the day just sorting their clothes because Sam always, always roped him into helping.

He'd almost swear that the fucker did it on purpose.

He resolutely opens his magazine back up and tries to get lost in the article illustrated with very, ahem, flexible women.

"Dean," Sam says a few minutes later.

Dean reluctantly looks up and then groans. Sam's pointing unerringly at a man outside, holding onto a newspaper while he walks leisurely towards the coffee shop across the street, and looking for all the world like he belongs there.

It's their mysterious human stalker. Again. Dean's getting real fucking tired of the guy.

"Duck," he advises Sam. Guy seems to have a hard-on to rival Texas for his geek brother.

He closes his magazine and dumps it onto his uncomfortable, ass-numbing little plastic chair. He's got to stretch before he goes anywhere, pop all of his joints back into place because that little torture device had almost locked them up but good, but then he's nudging Sam in the shoulder with his knee to get his attention again.

"I'll get rid of him," he says, "You? Stay with the laundry. I mean it, Sam," he warns when it looks like Sam's going to protest a little, even if he's crouched like a ginormous dork behind a washing machine. "I'm not replacing our clothes if they get stolen again. You'll have to hustle your ass to get more."

Sam mutters darkly under his breath, but stays put.

Dean walks out of the laundry mat with a swagger. Hey, anybody who gets him away from Sam's obsessive-compulsive, control freak meltdown over clothes is alright. For the most part. Even if they are a goddamn stalker who's been following them for states.

Guy rivals Henricksen.

He gets distracted for a few seconds wondering what Henricksen does in this world, with no Winchesters to accuse of every crime under the sun. Poor guy probably sits at home and cries himself to sleep at night, Dean decides with a smirk.

So far, their way of dealin' with this guy has included long, winding chases through city streets, getting in the Impala and taking off while he was pretending not to watch them, and hey, even hiding behind a trash can when none of the other options were available. Dean's thinkin' they might be in need of the direct approach.

Scare the shit out of him.

Dean likes that approach best anyway. He reaches out a hand to tap Stalking Man on one shoulder.

"Hey, man," he begins when Stalking Guy looks at him over his shades, "You mind telling me why you've been followin' us around? I'm hot shit, I know, but I gotta tell you, neither of us really swing your way."

The man swallows his mouthful of coffee and does his damned best to look confused. "I don't know what you're talking about," he says around the lid of his cup. He tries a little harder to look innocent while he's at it.

To Dean, it sort of looks like he's just bitten into a rotten piece of fruit, but, whatever. Not everyone is a master at lying like he is. Freakin' awesome at it, too.

"Yeah, see, that's not really gonna fly," Dean says right back. "I've seen you at least... what is it, eight times now? I know Sam ditched you a couple days ago."

"You're insane," Stalking Man mutters loudly. He looks around like the people in the coffee shop are gonna help him if he says it loud enough.

Dean snorts. If there's one thing he's learned about people, it's that they don't do anything if their own asses aren't on the line. He's more comfortable with most monsters than he is with people. "Nah, I'm not. Now, my brother over there? Sometimes, he's a little insane. He's sorting laundry for God's sake. What kind of man does that, huh?"

Stalking Man looks down into his coffee. "Your dad hired me," he finally says.

"Huh?" Dean asks him intelligently.

"Dean Winchester, right?" the man swirls his coffee, takes a gulp of it before he looks up at Dean with brown eyes. "I'm Richard Wilkins, private detective."

The way he says it sounds kind of like Dean'd always assumed Batman would introduce himself if he didn't have a pesky secret identity. He raises his eyebrows at the guy. "And you're following us because...?"

He's already got that feelin'. Dad hadn't liked Sam for a while, still didn't like Sam, never mind him saving Abby's ass or anything (with help, of course). Dean's just a little surprised that Mom didn't rip Dad a new one for even thinking of doing this.

"Not you," Wilkins says, "Sam. Or, rather, James Taylor."

That's the second time in about three days he's heard that name. Just like last time, it makes him clench his fists a little. Sam wasn't a fucking James Taylor. Sam was Sam Winchester, Sammy, pain in the ass little brother who never, ever did what was good for him and always had to have the last damn word. Not that abandoned kid nobody had loved.

He is, without a doubt, one day going to go on a rampage and knock the shit out of everyone Sam's ever interacted with as James Taylor. Just because. Doesn't need a specific reason, because most of it was shit, even if Sam doesn't really care all that much.

"You leave Sammy alone," Dean grinds out.

Wilkins gives him this kind of sorrowful, put upon look that's faker than Dean's usual, "I sympathize with your ghost trouble, even though you brought them on yourselves you motherfuckers," smile. Guy needs practice, Dean decides.

"Son," the man says and that, that right there? Makes Dean twitch almost enough that his hand starts going automatically for the butterfly he's got in his pocket, "You do know that your Sam's been lying to you almost from the get go, right? Your dad's worried about you."

Oh, look, same rhetoric even. Dean wonders just how gullible he looks, if both Dad and a total stranger think that Sam, skinny bean-pole Sam, has him wrapped around his finger. Which he sort of does, but, fuck it, it's not like Dean doesn't know it. Or like Sam was gonna try to use that to get anything out of him but the occasional milkshake.

Wilkins is looking at him like he's waiting for a mental breakdown. Dean holds onto his fraying temper with his fingernails. "Look, asshole, it's none of your freakin' business. At all. Seriously. Get lost."

"That's where you're wrong, kid. Your Dad hired me. And since he didn't show yesterday to take all the info, I figure that means he's not done with me yet."

Gonna kill you, Dean has time to think, before a huge hand is clamping down on the hand inching towards his pocket. He's suddenly standing in shadow. Sammy. Fucker. "I can kill him, right?" Dean asks.

Wilkins's eyes widen a little bit, coffee halfway to his mouth. He looks nervous, Dean notes, but he'd be nervous too if he suddenly had a couple of six foot plus guys looming over him. Well, he'd be nervous if he was a poncy little bitch with a bad combover and an attitude.

"No. No killing people," Sam says decisively. He tugs on Dean's wrist once before he lets go and turns away. "Come on before someone takes our clothes."

Dean narrows his eyes at the skeevy little detective man and is pleased when he hurriedly looks away. "You. Leave us alone."

The man swallows. He stands up, gives Dean a kind of shaky nod, and walks away. Dean watches him, eyes narrowed at his back, until he turns the corner. Then, he turns around and jogs to catch up with Sam, who's already back in the laundry mat, still sorting clothes with the kind of mind-boggling patience Dean only has when he's got to sharpen his knives.

"You totally sounded like some cowboy warning the bad guy off his girlfriend," Sam says softly when Dean pulls up even with him. He sounds totally amused about it all, the fucktard, like he thinks it's the funniest thing in the world that Dean had been threatening some middle-aged guy for snooping.

"Good thing you're a girl already, huh, Sammy?" Dean mutters back snidely. "Big bad private detective man has to save you from me." He doesn't mention that the guy thinks it's the other way around. He has his pride.

"Yeah, I kind of figured that's what he was," Sam says. He fishes around in the duffle still on one of the machines and finds a couple more pieces of clothes. "That's how Dad knew my name."

"Your fake name." Dean shifts his weight from one foot to the other. Some fatass is sitting in his chair, reading his Cosmo. Fucker. "Your fake, stupid name."

Sam just snorts a little, bending over to retrieve the pile of clothes he's got at his feet. They're the reds, Dean notices right away, and has to hold back a smirk when he sees the putrid whatever colored shirt sitting innocently on top of that pile. He'd totally called that. He was awesome to the max.

His brother reaches out to flip open the lid of one of the machines and fucking finally opens one of the washers to deposit an armload of clothes into it. Dean watches as he carefully feeds quarters into the machine and dumps in a capful of the cheap shit they'd picked up at the grocery store two buildings over.

That's another reason Sam's not allowed to do laundry by himself all that often. Dean has to reach over and stop the nimrod from adding another capful of soap. Sam never had learned that adding too much detergent just mean they'd have itchy, detergent full clothes. After the washing machine spewed bubbles.

"Dude," he says, "Less is more."

"That's not what you usually say," Sam mutters back. He reluctantly slams the lid on the washer closed and starts up the machine.

As soon as it starts going, Dean hops up and plops his ass on the lid. It rumbles under him and he drums his heels against the front of it; he can remember doing this with Dad and Sam when he was little, the both of them sitting on one machine and taking turns saying stuff while their voice vibrated all over the freakin' place. Dean tries it now, saying, "Poltergeist," just to hear his voice distend the word with warbles. Heh.

"You really are seven," Sam says.

He loads up the next three machines in quick succession, Dean keeping a hawk eye on the amount of detergent even while he tries out wendigo, changeling, shapeshifter, werewolf and, with a sidelong look at Sam, jinniyah.

Sam doesn't even twitch. He does, however, give him a nasty look before he boosts himself onto the machine next to Dean.

They're both quiet for a second, and then Sam says, "Bob the Demon," like it's the most natural thing in the world. The old washing machine, chugging and vibrating like a magic fingers bed, makes Sam sound like he's hiccup stuttering when he says it.

Dean cracks up. "I told you his name should be Bob," he hoots.

Sam smiles, dimples and everything, and ducks his head a little to hide it. Dean reaches over to ruffle his hair. Okay, so maybe Sam was a little more anal retentive control freak than he used to be. Still his little brother with his stupid sense of humor.

Dean slams his boots into the side of the machine and hums a little under his breath. Metallica comes out sounding more like one of Sam's jacked up "alternative" shit.

"We're gonna go find Mom after this, right?" Sam asks suddenly.

Dean swallows a little. Yeah, he'd maybe forgotten a little bit about that. Just a little. "Yeah, Sammy. We'll find her."

Both of them know it's not gonna be that freakin' simple. They've got no signs and no patterns to follow. They've got Dad and Gayle to skip out on and a stupid ass private detective that wants to stalk Sam. But sometimes, Sam's still so stupidly young, asking questions just to get reassurances, and Dean'll be damned if he doesn't answer that need.

Feels good to have someone who still looks up to him. Even if that someone is fully capable of kicking his ass with his freaky mind powers if he wanted to.

Not that Dean's ever gonna admit that. He leans over enough to bump his knee into Sam's bony kneecap, hard, and says, "Gotta have clean clothes first though, man. You smell like a toilet."

"That's you," Sam says.

Dean makes a big show of sniffing his clothes, lifting his arms to check. Yeah, he's smellin' a little ripe, but that's what happens when your bitch of a brother steals your clean clothes after upchucking on everything else. "Nah, that's a hundred percent Sam. No wonder you never get laid."

He has a sudden thought. And, no, thank you very much Sam, it is not lonely. He usually has lots of thoughts. This one's just a little weird.

He does not, in fact, know if Sam's ever been laid in this time place thing. Dean'd known pretty much down to the time Sam'd first gotten his sweaty mitts on a girl because Sam had come home smiling like a little girl and glowing. This time around? He doesn't really know.

That's kind of irking him. He sends Sam a suspicious look.

Sam pretends he doesn't see it and kicks his heels against his own machine, hard enough to get them dirty looks from lardass over there trying to figure out why he doesn't have girls falling all over him.

"I'm thinking Wyoming," Sam says. "For Mom."

"Why Wyoming?"

Sam shrugs a little. "Just a feeling."

Well, hell, they'd gone on less than "just a feeling" before. Especially if said feeling was coming from a powerful psychic who sometimes saw people die in his head.

"Alright," Dean says. "You get to tell Dad though."

* * *

When John doesn't hear from Dean, Mary, or hell, even Sam, within the next few days, he starts to get angry. Scratch that. He's been angry since his little girl looked at him with black eyes and sneered. What he does now is get downright _pissed_.

Dean's cell phone is off. John leaves him a nasty message, full of cuss words and the occasional plea for him to at least check in. He's having flashbacks to coming home with his son gone, and his wife's still missing, and he's going to kill something any minute now.

Unfortunately, the only thing in the house is Abby.

He's had to move her bed into his and Mary's room because she screams herself hoarse half the night. It takes less time for him to stumble over and gently shake her shoulder, rock her back to sleep, if she's in his room than it would having to run down the hall.

Besides, he'd stubbed his toes a grand total of twelve times that first night. He's not repeating that again.

He misses Mary.

John sits down on the edge of a kitchen chair, scrubs a hand over his face, and picks up the phone he's got on the table. He doesn't have a cell phone (newfangled business, is what he'd told Mary), but he's starting to wish he did. Would make it a hell of a lot easier to pace while he called.

He dials the numbers and waits.

The phone rings once.

"He's not gonna answer," Abby tells him. She's hovering in the doorway, arms wrapped around herself still; she's got self-hugging down to an art form right about now. "You know he's not going to. That's just how Dean is. He takes off and he doesn't leave any messages."

The phone rings a third time while he's looking at Abby out of the corner of his eye.

She sounds bitter. And pissed. She's his daughter, through and through. Dean's Mary's. Abby's always been his.

The fourth ring cuts off halfway through. John closes his eyes and rests the receiver against his temple. He's called enough to know by now that that doesn't mean jack shit. Dean's phone's as impatient as his boy is.

Right on cue, he hears, "This is Dean Winchester, leave a message after the beep. If you've got one of _those_ problems, leave a real specific message." There's a weird emphasis on those, like it's some kind of secret code John hasn't been able to crack.

John hangs up the phone, gently, without leaving a message.

"Told you," Abby mutters.

John grunts out a response, resting his face in his palms. His wife, his son, his... whatever the hell Sam was to all of them. Missing without leaving so much as a note.

Abby takes the chair next to him and leans over so she can cross her arms on the table. She drops her head into them a second later, turning so that she's facing John still, and says, "What're we gonna do?"

The phone rings.

His head whips around to look at it, thinking, hoping, and damnit, maybe even praying a little bit. Abby's regarding it with wary, distrustful eyes, but John scoops it up in the pause between the first ring and the second.

"Dean?" he asks.

There's a puzzled silence on the other line. "Mr. Winchester?" a man's voice finally asks.

John deflates. "The detective guy. Wilty."

"Wilkins, Mr. Winchester," Wilkins corrects mildly. He sounds a little frazzled, a little not quite there, and John? John can sympathize. Though he really, really doubts this guy is also missing his wife and his kid like John is.

"I know your name," John says, even though he doesn't, "What do you want? Now's not a good time."

The man on the other end of the line swallows hard. There's a sound like someone's just wiped a cloth across their sweat, and then Wilkins comes back on the line, still dry swallowing. "Mr. Winchester," he says, "I would appreciate it if you came down here so I can go over this case with you."

"Not now," John growls at him.

He's aware of Abby watching him with bright green eyes. Suspicious brat, John notes fondly, and tunes back into his conversation.

"... and you see, I don't take on subjects that _threaten me_ unless I'm being paid hazard," Wilkins finishes.

John blinks. "Sam threatened you?" he asks. He could see that. Kid was tall and still growing; he'd seen it and catalogued it a few days ago, when it looked like Sam might have started to gain a little on Dean's height. Skinny fuck, but scary too.

"Not Sam," Wilkins retorts, "Your kid. Possessive, scary kid."

"Dean?" John says incredulously. Abby narrows her eyes at him, leaning in to try to pick up the other side of the conversation. John leans a little farther away from her, tipping his chair back on its rear legs. He breathes a heavy sigh out through his nose.

"Dean's a good kid," he defends.

"I repeat: possessive and scary."

Which isn't much like Dean at all. Dean's all intensity and obsession, a bone-deep need to please paired with a devil may care smile.

Then he thinks about it. A bone deep need to please, he acknowledges, but he'd also stood toe to toe with John over the issue of Sam and he'd picked up, from somewhere, knowledge about how to trap and kill a demon. Before he was five years old.

Scary and possessive? Sounded about right.

"So, are you going to come by for that file?" Wilkins asks.

"Look," John says. He rubs a hand down his face again, feeling tired and pissed and _tired_ , worried down to his bones, "My wife's missin'. I haven't seen my son since the day she went missing. Now's not a good time."

Wilkins is quiet on the other side of the line. Abby purses her lips and buries her face in her arms, blonde hair fanning around her head like silk.

"I just saw your kid an hour ago," he finally offers. He sounds uncomfortable, twitching in his seat. John's not too sure he's happy knowing that his son can threaten a man like that. "At the Corner Coin on 6th. They're staying at the Westminster."

That's more than John'd known two minutes ago. He's gonna give this man the kind of tip that comes with three extra zeros at the end. "The Westminster," he repeats, just to be sure, then, "Thanks, Wilkins."

"That's what you're payin' me for," the man says. "Just... make sure you don't mention my name, alright?"

John snorts and hangs up the phone.

"Get some stuff together," he tells Abby quietly, "I found your brother."

She lifts her head, watches him for a second, and then reluctantly stands up. She doesn't ask what they need. John's glad; he doesn't have the foggiest clue what they might need to take a demon out of his wife.

That's why he's going to find his son.

 

 

Sam's got the laundry dumped out on both the beds. He's not folding it because, regardless of what Dean likes to rant about, he's not freaking anal about clothes; they just go into two separate duffels.

Dean gets most of the t-shirts because he's always hot. Sam claims most of the long sleeves for himself. The flannels get divided up equally between both bags, and Sam leaves Dean's boxer-briefs sitting in a sad little pile on the bed.

No way is he touching those more than he has to.

"Dude," Dean says. He's got the entire knife collection strewn out of the small table under the window, just asking for trouble even if he's got the curtains closed. "You know that I'm just gonna grab shit outta whatever bag's closest, right?"

Sam pulls a face at his duffle. He knows it. He just likes having things he can call his own. It's a left over from, hey, growing up again and having even less shit this time around than he did last time.

If he tells Dean that, he'll start looking at the knife he's currently sharpening like he's ready to commit homicide. Maybe even start cooing at it under his breath, like Sam can't ihear him/i describe all the ways he wants to fillet Sam's former foster families.

It is, frankly, a little disturbing, so he doesn't mention that.

He shrugs. "If you kept your dirty hands off my clothes, it would work perfectly."

"You have no clothes, Sam," Dean mutters. He tests the edge of the knife on his forearm, shaving hair off, and flicks it closed. "The only thing you had when I found you was a pair of pants and, what was it, a knife?"

Sam lobs a sock at Dean's head. One of the ones that he still can't tell if it's supposed to be brown or not, but he kind of suspects not, since he couldn't find a match for it anywhere in the dirty clothes.

Dean lets it smack him in the face and drop down into his lap. He calmly picks it up with one hand and points his newest knife at Sam's face with the other. "Gimme another sock if you're gonna deliver them," he says.

His boot thunks against the table as he drops both knife and sock onto it.

Sam doesn't look long enough to see Dean pull his shoe off. Dean's socks? Got toxic. His brother didn't see the need to change them unless the monsters could smell him coming from downwind. Which was why he couldn't tell if some of their socks were naturally brown or not.

While Dean's occupied doing that, Sam sneaks the putrid, whatever color it is shirt into his duffle. Let Dean get stuck having to wear it in public one day.

Dean's still wagging his hand in the air for another sock when Sam jerks his head up and frowns. He makes a hand motion at Dean, shut up in their language, fucked up though it's been by eighteen years apart.

The knock on the door sounds just when Sam gets a fix on who's making the skin between his shoulder blades do that really weird crawl thing. Former demon possessed, he gets first. Then, _familyDadgirlnotDeanfamily._

It feels like chewing on tinfoil.

"Fuck," Sam mutters.

Dean's got a resigned look on his face. "What're the odds that's not Dad?" he asks hopefully.

"Not good," Sam says. He rubs his face with one hand and looks at the door over the side of his palm. "You get to open it."

"Nuh-uh," Dean says right back. He's still got one shoe on and one shoe off, brownish sock hanging halfway off his foot as he tries to pull it on with one hand. "He's pissed at me, remember?"

Sam inches away from the door, hoping that Dean'll get up and get it if he manages to reach the bathroom. He can't answer the door if he's taking a leak, right? "Yeah, well, he hates me already."

"Don't even think about it," Dean says lowly. It sounds almost like a cough, but there's definite warning in his voice, and Sam really doesn't want to wake up with honey in his hair or shaved bald. Again.

He stops inching and pulls a face at Dean instead.

"So, answer the door, man. You've got nothing to lose." Dean smiles beatifically, fake as the sunrise painted in watercolor over their window. Dean'd cackled in delight when he'd seen the room and refused to budge afterwards; his brother? Has a thing for weird motels.

Sam crosses his arms and glowers. That is Dean logic. Dean logic makes regular people's heads hurt. "That's not--"

Dad's voice cuts Sam off. "I can hear you in there, boys." And he sounds pissed.

"Sammy'll get it in a second," Dean yells back through the closed door. He waves a hand at Sam, eyebrows tilted to that cocky angle just shy of what it has to be to make Sam want to sock him in the mouth.

"When this is over," Sam says softly as he closes in on the door, "I'm going to kill you."

Dean just laughs. "Bring it on, bitch."

Sam opens the door. Dad's not gonna go away and Sam doesn't want to get arrested for throttling his big brother. Even if the officer (and Dad, most likely) would declare it a "domestic dispute."

Dad's glaring at them when Sam finally gets the door open. It's a full on Dad glare; lowered eyebrows and tight, pinched mouth, staring dark eyes. Sam feels about two feet tall underneath it and has to fight the urge to go hide behind Dean. No matter how big he'd gotten, no matter how much he'd gotten a kick out of pissing Dad off, that look had always put the fear of God into him.

He turns his back on Dad and Abby, tactically inviting them in without having to talk to them, and tries to ignore the itching sensation that's crawling up his back at having someone that _mad_ where he can't see them.

Besides, Dean's watching both Dad and Abby with hawk eyes, despite the fact that he's got his shoes on the table. Sam can see him tucking that knife into his boot even as he snags one of the shirts off the open duffle Sam's still got on Dean's bed and spreads it out over the knives on the table.

Yeah, Sam figures, that would have been a disaster to show their family. Dean's family. Whatever it was now. Dad's still his, even if he's not Mom and Dad's anymore.

"Hey Dad," Dean greets him casually. There's a beat of silence, just long enough that Sam can hear the potential snub Dean wants to inflict and discards in favor of the simpler, "Hey Gayle."

Dad looks at them both like they're a few inches up from scum on his list.

Abby just glares daggers at Dean for a second before turning to stare at him like he's the second coming. It reminds him of how the Yellow-Eyed Demon used to look at him, and that makes Sam really uncomfortable.

The demon remains, floating through his system and integrated in his blood, hum out a greeting to whatever residue demons leave in their hosts. Sam's mouth twitches, enough that Dean catches it and sends him a questioning lift of his eyebrows; Sam waves it away with a nod and a twitch of his hand. He knows it'll fade in a few months, when Abby completely replaces her blood supply, but in the meantime it's honestly creepy. And he knows creepy.

He wonders if she can feel it too, buzzing under her skin. He'd been possessed once before Azazel, but he hadn't met any demons after that until that last one months and months later. He's a little curious. In the morbid, slightly crazy way Dean accuses him of being with research.

"How'd you find us?" Sam finally asks when it looks like everyone's plan is just to stand there and stare.

Dad rounds on him again, still glaring. Sam has to physically stop himself from either cringing back or raising his chin and jutting his jaw; he'd never dealt well with Dad's anger. The other man finally grinds out, "Hired a detective. He found you."

Dean makes a dismayed noise through his nose. "Dude, I wagered Sammy that nobody would have been dumb enough to hire that turdling," he says. "Guess I was wrong." He stands up and purposefully moves in front of the table full of knives, crossing his arms as he leans back against it.

Sam shakes his head and hides a smile by ducking. They hadn't even had that conversation, but they hadn't needed to. The man had been a ridiculous excuse for a private detective.

"Shut up, Dean," Dad says.

His brother shuts his mouth immediately, automatically, and looks uncomfortable. There's a look on his face that Sam hasn't seen in something like twenty years and it makes him _pissed_ is what it does. Sam finds himself leaning forward aggressively, about to sidle between the two of them and get into Dad's face about it. He'd spent a lifetime watching Dad do this to Dean. He's not gonna watch it again.

Dean finds his voice before he can do more than take a step or two. "Dude," he says. One hand comes up to press against Sam's chest, and, huh, seems like Sam'd made it more than a few steps if he's already by Dean's side.

He's not paying that much attention to it though, because Dad is still glaring at him and he's never backed down from a challenge this man's issued. Never.

The hand on his chest lifts a few inches and then smacks back down hard, right over his heart. "Chill, Sam," Dean says seriously. He lowers his voice, enough that Sam should be the only one able to hear it unless Dad or Abby have bat hearing, and continues, "Furniture's starting to shake."

It is, Sam finds when he takes his eyes off of Dad. The nearest bed is vibrating a little, not that noticeable, but, Sam sees with a sinking stomach that Abby's watching it. Her green eyes are wide, frightened, and Sam clamps down on his telekinesis before it can do its flying routine, like it usually does when he gets uncomfortable.

The almost-pain telekinesis always causes blurs into the sensation of half of his blood saying hi to something infesting hers. Sam twitches and drags his gaze away from her before he can let that give him a headache. He doesn't need another one so soon, thanks.

The bed stops shaking a minute later. Sam steps away from Dean's hand with a miniature shrug, designed to look put upon even as he leans most of his weight into it for a second. He hates that Dad can still get under his skin. The man'd been dead for two years, for God's sake, and Sam hadn't seen him for eighteen after that.

He's only known this version of Dad for less than six months and he's already sometimes ready to strangle the man.

Abby narrows her eyes at him when he looks up, but she doesn't say anything. She's gone white around her mouth, pinched too much, and her hands are tucked up under her armpits, but she keeps her mouth shut about what she saw and doesn't ask any questions.

Sam's glad. He clears his throat and takes another step away from Dad and Dean.

"Sorry," he mutters. Dean makes a non-committal sound back and crosses his arms again, his ass perched on the table. Sam hopes he's not sitting on the knives.

Dad crosses his arms right back at Dean. "You were going to skip out on me," he says, like the last two minutes have never happened.

Sam can't help but think about how much simpler life would be if one of his pain-in-the-ass powers turned out to be the power to make someone forget something. Then he thinks about someone like Ava with a power like that and shudders.

If Dean notices, he doesn't comment on it. "Yeah, we were. We're not takin' _amateurs_ with us on a hunt, Dad. No dice."

"Hunt?" Abby asks. She looks tiny and frail in their motel room. Sam doesn't know why.

"Figure of speech," Dean shoots back easily, "What you've gotta remember is that me and Sam? Been doing this for years. You? Amateur. I'm not gonna have your blood on my hands, Dad. Take Gayle home, put salt on the windows, and stay there until we call you. Got it?"

"Don't you take that tone with me," Dad says. He narrows his eyes, leans forward aggressively. Sam curls his fingers into fists and looks anywhere but at Dad. "You're going after my wife, Dean. Your mother. You're not leaving me behind."

"What about Gayle?" Dean asks.

He's got that calculating look on his face, like he's trying to call your bluff. Sam knows from experience that bluff calling? Never really works on Dad. He's just as likely to kick your ass to the curb with twenty bucks and a backpack to your name.

"She doesn't want to be alone and I don't trust anyone to take care of her," Dad says. He still looks like he's ten seconds away from screaming his head off in frustration, so Sam decides its time to look away.

He looks at Abby instead. She's obviously not paying any attention to the conversation, because she's just missed a cue to glare at Dean without even glancing up. Sam hasn't known her that long, but he knows that about her.

Instead, she's drifting around their room, peeking into the messy bathroom and bending over to try to unobtrusively look under the beds. Sam doesn't know what she's looking for, but she makes a safer target for his eyes than Dad and Dean do.

The tingling/static buzz down his spine is almost worth it. _Hi_ , he imagines his demon gunk saying, and _hi back, dad_ , from what's leftover in Abby's blood.

He needs to get out more.

Dad and Dean are still arguing and getting louder. Sam doesn't really want to hear it, so he moves to the bed behind Dean and starts shoving stuff into the duffle. Random stuff, like Dean's other boot (on the floor, and Dean had shifted out of the way with a weird look to let him get at it).

He wanders over into the bathroom and picks up all their things. Toothbrushes, hair brush, hair gel, shaving cream, razors. The bathroom towels, because they can never have too many, and the complimentary shampoo the place is nice enough to offer.

Abby's watching him instead of the room when he comes back out and dumps it all into his duffle. Sam ignores her. When he's sure that he's got pretty much everything packed away, excluding the knifes Dean's still got covered on the table, he sits on the edge of his bed and thinks.

They've got to get from Kansas to Wyoming sometime soon; Sam's internal _shit is gonna hit the fan_ warning light (Dean's name for it, not his) has been blinking steadily faster since he tentatively identified Wyoming as the center of it. They need to go, and they need to go soon.

"Fine," Sam says suddenly. He interrupts the heated argument developing between Dad and Dean.

Dean's head whips around to pin him with a half-incredulous, half-pissed stare. "Dude," he says, and in that Sam can hear "You ran from me for eighteen years," and "Your wish? kind of shitty right about now," and "I am so going to kill you, bitch."

Sam ignores him for a minute. "Can you guys give us a second? Car's out front, stick your gear in the tru--the backseat." No way they should have access to the modest collection of guns in the trunk. Not yet.

When they've gone, Abby still watching them suspiciously and Dad giving them a threatening look, that's when Sam turns back to look at Dean.

"Look, they're not safe at the house," Sam says.

He wills Dean to understand it, to get it. The Yellow-Eyed Demon had been able to be doused in holy water without smoking. Meg had broken Bobby's devil's trap before Dean and Bobby had managed to exorcise her. The Demon's offspring could be just as strong and Abby and Dad were the intended victims. No way in hell did either of them stand a chance if a demon managed to get into the house.

"Bobby?" Dean asks tightly.

"Don't know him," Sam returns. They don't. They haven't really had an occasion to get in touch with Bobby Singer. Dean's got Roadhouse connections this time around, a little of them at least, but by mutual agreement they've been staying away from the clusterfuck that was Gordon and the Roadhouse by default.

They've got nowhere to turn. Sam can see it reflected in Dean's eyes.

"Fuck," Dean says eloquently.

Then he goes outside to direct Dad and Abby on the correct way to store things in the Impala.

* * *

Dean is never, ever going to think about the ride to Wyoming again. Ever. He's made a pact with his brain that he's not going to even have _nightmares_ about it, that's how stinkin' terrible it is.

Dad glowers from the backseat nearly the entire time, pissed that he's not in the front and that they're following Sammy's hunch instead of doing God knows what, or hell, for all Dean knows Dad's just pissed because he's driving too fast. The man doesn't say and Dean doesn't ask.

Gayle sits next to Dad for the entire ride. She makes up for his silence. She bitches about his music and the highway, the bumpy road and the lack of built in restrooms in the Impala's trunk. She puts freakin' Sammy to shame.

His traitor of a brother, on the other hand, goes to sleep as soon as the Impala hits her stride. She starts making that happy rumbling purr she only makes when Dean goes over seventy and Sam's out, sliding back and forth on his seat with the curves in the road. Once or twice he lands on Dean's shoulder; Dean lets him stay there for a few minutes, until his ginormous heavy head starts cutting off the circulation in his arm, and then he nudges him back over.

That part's not so bad, though he'll kill anything that tries to make him admit that.

That all changes the minute he hits the Wyoming border though. Sam sits up like Dean's just rammed a hot poker down his spine, eyes wide open and nothing but pupil. He makes a noise like a dying animal, all wheezing breath, and Dean's automatically flinching away from it, pulling the steering wheel his way to get away from the _noise._

In the backseat, Abby lets out a scream, which is not helping at all. Dad swears, which is marginally better, and the next thing Dean knows Dad's halfway over the backseat and grabbing at the wheel. That helps even less, because Dean's automatic response to anyone grabbing at his steering wheel has become, after years of Sammy yelling at him to slow down in urban areas, to wrench the wheel further to the left and step on the gas.

Lucky for all of them, Sam shuts up almost immediately, curling in to protect his head, and Dean can think.

Dean jerks his baby back onto the road as soon as his muscles un-seize, apologizing to her the whole way.

When the car is more or less back in his lane (he's not going to worry about it too much, because, dude, deserted highway), he turns his attention to Dad first. Mostly because Dad's in the way of him getting to Sam, who he can see the gigantic feet and legs of, but nothing else.

After pushing and shoving Dad back into the back seat, he is once again able to see all of his geektastic, psychic little bitch of a brother. Who is curled around his skull like it's physically hurting him to be in Wyoming and wasn't this just fantastic.

One handed, Dean digs the bottle of pills out of his jacket. Again. He never goes anywhere without the suckers now.

"No," Sam says when Dean waves them in his general direction, "It's fine. I just wasn't expecting..." he trails off about exactly what it was he was expecting to find, but then rallies and says, "She's here."

"Kind of figured there, Lassie."

"What was that?" Gayle asks from the backseat. She's sipping some holy water she must have found back there; Dean's heartened to see that he's managed not to pick up any demonic passengers in between Kansas and here, but he's kind of pissed that she's drinking that when they'll need it later.

"You're gonna want to put that down, Gayle," he says instead of answering her question, "We've only got so much holy water without you drinkin' it all. We'll need it."

"Dean," Sam says reprovingly. Great.

His brother turns in his seat to face Gayle, trying to smile. It comes off looking more like the bastard child of a grin and a patented Sammy bitchface number nine, but Gayle melts into a little pile of incestuous girl at it. Friggin' weirdo.

"You know I have visions, right?" Sam asks.

It's a rhetorical question, but Gayle nods her head anyway. Dean rolls his eyes and stops looking in the rearview mirror. No way was he going to watch that schmoopy lovefest go on. No thanks.

"I can feel demons," Sam says next to his hear.

There's a general silence in the backseat. Dean clenches his hand on the steering wheel and things about tattooing the words "do not tell people about your scary shit psychic powers, Sam," on Sam's arms, face, chest, legs, hell, anywhere he can reach. Maybe if he does that, the words'll sink through his skin and manage to stick in his brain.

"You can... feel the de--demo--things?" Gayle asks in a small voice.

Dean can just about hear what she's thinking, but so can Sam and Sam's always been better at that whole reassuring thing. Unless it was Sam that needed reassuring. Then Dean totally took the Olympic gold in that event.

"You don't feel like anything to me." Sam lies through his teeth on that one, Dean's pretty sure. He'd seen him refusing to look at Gayle earlier in the day.

"I wasn't worried," Gayle says immediately.

Dean butts right in before Sam can start on his whole pacify the victim speech. "Where're we going?" he asks before Dad can. He flicks his eyes to the rearview mirror and tries not to wince; okay, so Dad's not gonna be asking questions anytime soon. He still looks like he's kind of shell-shocked from Sam's goddamn lack of secret keeping ability.

"I," Sam says. He squints his eyes, already narrowed with remembered pain, and says, "I think she's coming to us now, Dean. Let's find somewhere to hole up."

Time to go a-squatting then. He doesn't give Gayle or Dad a chance to really process what Sam's said, because he can see an old wood structure coming up on the right. It looks dilapidated, like something he and Sam would check out if they were horrendously bored on a stretch of uninhabited highway. Looks like something they could take a stand in, if push came to shove.

Dean pulls off the highway and onto the unpaved, unused grassy trail that might have been a road at one point or another. He's not real sure, but he grimaces right along with the Impala as rocks slam into her undercarriage. Somebody owes him for this.

Sam, if no one else. Sam, at least, could be guilted into giving the Impala a wax job. Even if he did it wrong and Dean'd have to sneak out in the middle of the night to fix the fuck-up his brother had done to his baby, it'd be worth it. For someone who'd, in another lifetime, scored a 174 on his LSATs (whatever the hell those were), Sam could just not understand the basic, all mighty directions of "wax on, wax off."

Bitch always left weird marks on his car when he waxed it.

He's sniggering to himself by the time he's close enough to the building to kill the car's engine. Sam gives him a strange look, full of, "oh my God, you're a moron," while Gayle mutters to herself in the back seat. Dad's quiet. Dean's glad. He doesn't really want to talk to either of them right now.

That's what Sam's for anyway.

"Home sweet home," Dean says as soon as he's parked. He pets the Impala's steering wheel a little, apologizing for her accommodations, and then opens his door. "Everybody out. We've got work to do."

"I call the salt," Sam says. Fucktard. He knows Dean hates drawing those devil's traps; it's one thing to draw the ones that only hold the low level demons, like the kind that had been inhabiting Gayle. It's another to have to sit there for freakin' _hours_ drawing the most complicated shit Dean'd ever seen. And both him and Sam _suck ass_ at drawing, which means he's got to draw the stupid thing in chalk or something equally erasable first to make sure he doesn't fuck the design up without a chance to fix it.

It's enough to drive a Hunter to drink.

Which is why Dean pulls out his privilege. "Salt's mine," he says. When Sam opens his mouth to protest, already reaching across the top of the car (damn kid has mismatched gorilla arms, for all that he's still missing a couple inches of height), Dean grins. "I'm older," he reminds Sam, and then, "And you left me, you fucker. You draw."

There's an ominous silence from the vicinity of the Impala's backseat. Dean cheerfully ignores it. Dad wanted the truth? Hell, he could have it. School of hard knocks style too, because no way in hell was Dean going to sit down and try to explain it.

"Dean," Sam whines.

"Suck it up, little brother," Dean retorts and goes around to the trunk to get the mega bag of salt they'd picked up... somewhere. Some specialty restaurant outlet store or something that hadn't wanted to sell them anything until Sam had turned on the lethal puppy eyes and asked again.

Dad's voice is loud and gruff when he says, "What the hell?"

Gayle sounds like she's biting a lemon when she responds with, "I _told_ you he's one of us."

His little brother, on the other hand, just pulls an epic bitchface and ducks back into the car for a few seconds to rustle in the glove box for the box of colored chalk Dean'd bought as a gag gift a few times back. Nothing better than drawing a chick with huge knockers on a motel parking lot. In bright pink.

Sam, being the buzzkill he is, just picks the blue chalk. Kid has a thing for that color. And the purple crayons, but Dean wasn't going to bring that up again unless Sam was really asking for it.

And there's his bag of salt. He pulls it up with a grunt; hey, fifteen pounds of salt? Not that light. He dared anybody to try picking it up without making a sound. They'd have to be a damn demon to pull it off.

While he's back there, he also helps himself to the gun supply. The shotguns go under his arm when he puts the sack of salt on the lip of the car's trunk. He takes a handful of shells, rock salt ones, because he's not going to fucking shoot his mom with blessed bullets even if it'd save him a few bruises. The rock salts just in case the house is haunted like their luck's insisting it's gonna be.

Dad and Gayle finally clamber out of the backseat.

"You need to--"

"If the next word out of your mouth is explain, swear to God I'm gonna tape your mouth shut, Gayle," Dean says before she can get started. Sam's bitching is cute. Gayle's? Is totally not.

Instead of correcting his tone like Dad usually would, well usually being if Dean'd made it a practice to talk to Gayle like she was an eight year old who wouldn't stop touching the stove, Dad makes a noncommittal grunting noise and seems to shove it all back for later.

Dean hides a grin by picking up the sack of salt. That's his Dad. Shoot first, deal with your emotions second. Good old marine training.

Sam's already inside the building, muttering bitchily to himself while he sits in the middle of an emerging devil's trap. His brother works from the outside in, which is the strangest friggin' thing Dean's ever seen; Bobby works (worked?) from the inside out, the tiny animal symbols first and then the circle, then the Latin. Sam has to be difficult and start on the Latin, circling and curling around like a serpent.

Dean drops the salt on the ground with an audible thump. Sam doesn't even flinch or pause in what he's doing, just sends Dean a warning shove of air that feels like a hand getting ready to shove him even though there's nothing there.

But hey, it has the added effect of him getting another Gayle glare and a partial Dad one for good measure. He puts the shotguns on the ground too, but he does that a whole hell of a lot more gently than he had with the salt. He's never had a gun go off accidentally on him and he's never planning on it happening.

He moves out of the way, a little farther into the hall, to see just what they're dealing with. It's not a big house, just big enough to cause a clusterfuck if he manages to miss an opening they want closed. The demon's only gonna be able to get at them from one direction by the time he's done.

His sister crouches next to Sam and watches, ignoring the rest of them. That's fine by Dean, actually, since he really doesn't want her following him around and picking at his salt lines or _staring at him_ with her wicked green eyes. How she'd managed to turn into a little twit is beyond him.

Dad steps over Sam's hand, looking for all the world like he'd paused and contemplating stepping straight on it while he was close enough to get away with it. Dean does not, in fact, realize that he's got the shotgun in a prime jabbing grip until after Dad's foot has safely cleared away from Sam's hand.

Sam's bones? Freakin' delicate. If they'd broken because of a little zombie love tap once upon a time, Dad could have snapped them like twigs by stepping on them. And then Dean would've been forced to brain him in the head and that would've done a number on his psyche.

"Hand me the green?" Sam asks in the tense silence. All three of them pause for a second, wondering who he's talking to, before Gayle reaches over to rifle through the box of chalk.

Sam looks up at Dean while she's distracted and Dad's stomping off further into the house. Chill, that look says, I've got it. And the green chalk, halfway across the hallway because Sam'd probably just thrown the chalk on the ground when he started drawing, rolls merrily to Sam's outstretched hand even while Gayle keeps pawing through the box.

Yeah, Dean forgets about that sometimes. If Dad had tried anything (and he's not saying that Dad would have, except he knows his Dad and John Winchester's not above being petty when he wants to be) Sam would have been able to stop him with the _power of his mind_. Not only was that freaky, it was fucked up. Awesome too.

"Oh, hey," Sam says, "I found it." He grins at Gayle, full on harmless, ha-ha, puppy mode. Dean'd seen _Ellen_ fall for that look before, so he's not real surprised that Sam gets away without so much as a peep about wasting Gayle's precious time.

Bitch.

Sam starts in on the circle now that the Latin's finished, leaning back so that he can draw it in big, concentric arches to try and make it as neat as possible. Doesn't really work.

Dean tilts his head to the side to look at it. After a few seconds of silent contemplation, he offers, "It's more oval than round there, Sammy." Gayle glares at him, but Dean just grins. She looks almost exactly like Sam when she makes that face. He wants to tell her that, but he doesn't. Instead, he needles Sam some more. "Might want to fix that. Dunno what oval does."

"Bite me," Sam growls back. He does, however, rub his sleeve against the top and bottom of his oval to erase his lines and start over.

Dean figures his work there is done. He shuts the door, open all this time because he hadn't wanted to close it and accidentally brain someone in the head, and fishes his knife out of his pocket so he can poke a hole in the sack of salt. It's easier to pour from the bottom. Less waste that way, if he can plug the hole with his finger when he's done with it.

"You want this way blocked?" Dean asks. Stupid question, but Sam's drawing the devil's trap right there on the goddamn floor, so it's not like he knows what his brother's thinking.

"Yeah," Sam says. "We get it distracted with enough mojo going on, and we might be able to..." he trails off, biting his lip as he gives up on making perfect circles and starts in on the more intricate runes in the inner circle.

"What are you guys talking about?" Gayle butts in suddenly, rocking on her heels in a way that Dean finds distinctly disturbing. He's never seen anyone who's still able to crouch like that after they've hit puberty. It's creepy.

"Nothing you need to worry about," Dean tells her. He raises his eyebrows when she looks at him like she wants to use the chalk to flay him alive; Sam gives him a little reproachful shove, hands-free. Dean stumbles towards the far end of the hallway with an oath, giving Sam a nasty look. Sam winces like he's just given himself a headache. Serves him right.

He can take a hint. "I'm goin'," he tells Sam.

Sam nods down at his masterpiece and gives him another tiny little shove. Bastard. "I'll put one on the ceiling in the living room when I'm done here," he says.

Dean makes a noncommittal noise and leaves.

Behind him, he can hear Gayle say, "God, he's such an _asshole_." He wants to wash her mouth out with soap, which, weird, because he couldn't care less if Sammy curses. In fact, it just gives him a secret thrill, because his nerdy uptight little brother had just resorted to cursing to insult him.

Always awesome.

* * *

John follows Dean when his son comes out of the entrance way. Mostly because he almost snapped an eighteen year old kid's wrist back there and he doesn't want to tempt himself into actually doing it by staying around Sam. He's not going to be that man, no matter what the kid's been lying to him about.

The house they're in is falling apart. No if ands or buts about it, but Dean and Sam seem perfectly ready to stage an all out war in it. John's only seen one real exorcism (and his mind's trying as hard as it can to block out the memory of his daughter with a monster lookin' out of her eyes), but he's seen movies. They've got to have an inkling of truth in them somewhere, and that means this house is going to become ground zero for something horrific pretty soon.

If Sam wasn't as much of a liar as John thinks he is.

Dean barely looks at him when he walks by, doesn't tense when John falls into step with him, but when they get far enough away from the hall Abby's in, he stops for a minute.

"Don't you hurt Sam," he says, low and easy, and leans down to start pouring a line of salt against the dilapidated window frame.

John raises his eyebrows. "I wouldn't," he denies. He won't. He won't hurt an eighteen year old kid no matter how much he wants to shake him until the truth comes out. For that matter, Dean probably knows just as much if not more about what's going on and John's not gonna take a hand to his boy.

"Good," Dean says. He moves from that window to the next, big open airy thing with no glass in its panes, and pours a line of salt as thick as his arm. "You don't hurt Sam and we don't have a problem."

"Are you really brothers?" John asks instead of trying to articulate the sheer _anger_ that suddenly blazed through him. He doesn't know why he's suddenly furious, but he is. Maybe because his kid just threatened him over a boy he can't have known more than a few months.

In the same way that he couldn't have known about all that demon stuff and how he shouldn't have called out for a Sammy when he was four.

"Is he... mine?" he continues. He doesn't see how, can't imagine being unfaithful to Mary, but he's got a demon backing him up and a sudden fascination with logging just how many of his relatives he can see in Sam's face.

Dean doesn't say anything for a couple of seconds. As soon as he finishes the line he'd started, he goes scrounging around in the room, toeing fallen apart furniture out of his way while he looks for something.

"Depends on your definition of yours," Dean finally says. He makes a small noise of satisfaction when a moldering chair yields a long, flat piece of wood; he props the wood in front of the glass-less window and calls it good. It looks like it'll cut down on wind, but not by much.

Not that John's worried about wind right now. "The hell do you mean by that?"

"I mean it's complicated, Dad." Dean picks up his salt again and goes to the stairway leading up to a second floor. "You think demons are bad? This is worse. It's not worth thinkin' about right now."

"To hell with that, Dean," John just about snarls. He catches Dean by the arm when he looks like he's just going to lean over and pour out another line (John doesn't even know what the lines of salt are for, the way Dean's acting it's like they're gonna be the holy grail of their quest to find Mary). "You talk to me now."

Dean's arm flexes in his hold, just enough that John can _tell_ when his son decides it's not worth putting him on his ass for. When and where did his son figure out how to move like a soldier? He feels like he's losing his mind here, losing his son and his wife and his daughter, and gaining that strange, messed up boy out there in exchange for all of them.

Shitty rate, he thinks semi-lucidly.

"Look," Dean says. He pulls his arm out of John's grip, easy like, and sets the bag of salt on its side so that the huge pile that's been leaking out of it this whole time stops. "Sammy's mine. Ours. Whatever. We'll tell you all about it later, alright? Right now, we gotta concentrate or that demon out there's going to hand us our asses."

"Dean," John says when his son bends back down to smooth the pile of salt into place with his fingers. "I have to know. I can't. I need to know."

He doesn't know why, but he does. It's all he can think about, tearing through his skull, _how how how_. How did Dean know this Sam, how does John feel like he's tucked that boy into bed once upon a time, how could he be his, how could he not. He. Needs. To. Know.

"Sam's a Winchester," Dean says. He pushes the salt into place and stands up, doesn't look at John at all. "He was supposed to have been born on May 2nd, 1982," his lips twist, and he turns, strides away from John, "Mom had Gayle instead. You need anything else, you're gonna have to ask Sam. I'm a little fuzzy on the details."

John stands there, watching his son's retreating back, and remembering. May 2nd had been the night Dean woke up screaming, begging; it's branded into his memory as one of the worst things he can remember, right up there with people dying around him in Vietnam and the day he came home to find his wife and his daughter huddled up and crying over a letter on the fridge.

"Where's Sammy?" Dean had demanded, asked, pleaded, and later, whispered lovingly at Mary's pregnant belly.

Dean was right. He shouldn't have told him.

* * *

Abby gets talkative as soon as Dean takes off, snickering to himself. Sam has no idea what he's thinking about that he finds so funny, but he figures he's better off not knowing. He just wishes he'd taken Abby with him when he went.

She's not a bad kid. Girl. Woman. Whatever she was. Everyone seems like a kid to him sometimes, because he may look eighteen but he's closer to fifty. He's older than Dad. That makes him boggle sometimes, when he's not busy drawing devil's traps on the floor.

Anyway, Abby's not that bad. But when she crouches there next to him, babbling about how much Dean sucks and why would he think otherwise and why does he hang around that loser brother of hers and are they really related, because, if not, she'd totally be the better option for a significant other.

Sam tunes her out for the most part. He nods in the right places, looks up from his work to give her a sympathetic look when she turns to ranting about how Dean shouldn't have kept these things from her, but it's all automatic.

Until she starts stuttering. Then he listens.

"Do you really think you guys can get rid of the de-thing in Mom?" she asks. She's got her hair twirling nervously around her fingers, over and under, and she's chewing on her lower lip.

Sam lets the chalk come to a rest and gives her his full attention. "Yeah," he says easily, "I do."

He damn well better believe it. He hadn't given his brother up for eighteen years just so some second-rate demon with a grudge could take apart everything he'd wished for. No way in hell. And that wasn't even counting Dean, who would have been perfectly happy storming hell if that's where his family was.

"It'll be alright," Sam tells Abby, "Me and Dean know what we're doing."

Her mouth twists a little. That's a familiar face, Sam thinks with a wry nod towards the Dean in his head. Definitely a bitchface.

"Dean?" she finally says.

"Best hunter I know," Sam says back. He doesn't say anything else, because Abby wouldn't listen even if he did, but he wants to add, best big brother too, even though he's an absolute nimrod and got himself killed once before because of his big mouth.

"If you say so," Abby mutters. She sounds disbelieving and humoring, like she's just telling him what he wants to hear. As long as she's not going to get him or Dean or Dad or Mom killed because she can't let go of her grudge for two seconds, Sam's fine with that.

There's plenty of time later to bully Dean into mending fences with her, Sam thinks. He picks up his chalk again and gives her a reassuring smile before he goes back in to the minute detail in the center of his devil's trap.

He'd purposefully made it small enough that it'll only hold one person. No big trap that someone could stumble into if they're not looking carefully enough. Just one small enough that the demon would have enough room to stand and not much else.

Abby hands him a different colored piece of chalk. It doesn't really matter what color Sam uses, so he takes it from her and gives her the green one.

"You know," he says, because Dean's right, he really can't keep his mouth shut, "Dean's not that bad. Honestly," he says when he sees the look Abby shoots him, somewhere between distasteful and furious, "He's just... Dean."

"I think I know him better than you do," she snaps. She reaches out and grabs the chalk from him again, kind of petty and a little, "fine, if you'd rather talk about your _feelings_ than use it, I'm gonna keep it," and in that second, she's so much like Dean that Sam has to blink.

"You've only known him for, what, less than a year?" Abby asks. She's seething now, a little, her face turning the same pale Dad goes when he's on his way to pissed. "He's my _brother._ "

Mine too, Sam doesn't say. "Who are you mad at?" he asks instead, "Him or me?"

The kicker is that he knows she doesn't really know. She's pissed at Dean for leaving her and pissed at him that Dean thinks he's more important than she is and she does not understand the cardinal rule of Dean.

Abby doesn't answer for long enough that Sam leans over and gently pries her hand off the chalk he was using. They don't have enough time to just be sitting around. Sam's got to finish this trap and move on to the next one soon.

He can feel the demon coming on fast. And she's not alone. He'll have to warn Dean and Dad about that in a minute.

"It doesn't matter," Abby says when he's almost done. She sounds like she's putting on a brave front and Sam's reminded of just how young she is. He'd done his fair share of stupid things when he was eighteen, even if he refused to lump leaving for college into that share of stupid.

She turns her head away from him, letting her hair hide it from view and says, "Dean hates me anyway."

Sam wants to strangle her. He'd never, even on his bad days, ever thought that Dean hated him.

"That's stupid," he says.

He leans draws in one last line and leans back to look at the devil's trap, trying to measure it up to the one he's got floating around somewhere in his head. That line, he finally decides, is off enough to give it a weak point, and he reaches forward to fix it.

"It isn't," Abby insists while he's scrubbing with his sleeve. Her voice gets louder, loud enough to reverberate along the empty hallway their in. "He left me. He. He hates me, okay?"

"The only thing he hates is demons." Sam stops and thinks about it for a second. "And alternative music."

She's still not looking at him, but that's alright. Sam pushes himself to his feet, satisfied with his trap, and holds out a hand to help her up.

She ignores it. "If he didn't hate me, why'd he leave to go find _you_ , huh?" she asks. Her hands clench on her knees. "You're our brother, I know you are, don't lie, so why're you more important to him than I am? It's not fair."

"A lot of things aren't fair, Abby," Sam says. He doesn't know how to tell her that, yeah, Dean's always going to chose him over her because it's been pounded into Dean's head that _Sammy comes first_ since before he even went to school. That's not something you can unlearn in a lifetime. Two lifetimes. Whatever.

Abby sniffs and then hauls herself to her feet. She walks off without acknowledging him, but, that's alright. He just needs her to think about it a little. She needs to understand.

And to get it through her head that Dean? Giant soft squishy marshmallow. Squishy princess even. All she'd have to do would be to turn on the waterworks or pull puppy eyes and he'd be apologizing in a hundred and one silent ways. Granted, those ways sometimes manifested as him dunking your head in your soup or letting you drive the Impala, but, still. That was Dean.

Dean's nowhere in sight when he follows Abby to the next room, but Dad's leaning against one wall, watching him. Sam hunches his shoulders in self-consciously and goes to look for his brother. As uncomfortable as he'd been being alone with Dad back then, at least he'd known that he could give as good as he got.

Now? It's just weird staring at the man and knowing it wasn't the same person who'd handed him a gun when Sam'd been afraid of the dark.

"Hey," Sam calls.

"What?" Dean demands irritably from somewhere in the direction of where Sam would assume the kitchen had once been.

He walks that way, quickly, trying not to read too much into Dad's glare. Knowing him, he'd eavesdropped on that whole conversation, and hearing Dean call him "little brother" might have been a mistake or a weird endearment, but Sam hadn't refuted Abby's claim of siblinghood. So.

"Your sister really kind of hates you," Sam says by way of greeting.

"Heard you talking to her," Dean says back. He's pouring salt slowly in a thick line at the door that might or might not lead to the pantry. No use leaving open doorways."

"You should to talk to her later."

"Yeah, kind of got that, thanks Sammy," Dean mutters at him.

Sam shrugs. The windows are already lined in salt and the doorway back into the cramped, moldering living room's got a line of salt as thick as Sam's palm on it. "Where do you want the other trap?" he asks.

Dean nods back towards the living room. Sam stares at him like he's grown another head.

"I'm not going out there alone," he says. "Da-damnit, John's," that feels a little weird on his tongue, "Going to kill me if he heard me talking to Abby too. No. I'll finish the salt." He reaches out for it and gets a shoulder to his chin for his trouble.

"Suck it up," Dean says. He shoves a little, putting his back into it, and Sam curses the fact that right now Dean outweighs him by a good fifteen pounds. He'll put those and more on in the coming months, but still.

He slides back a couple of inches, towards the doorway. "Don't fuck up the salt," Dean says cheerfully, still pouring.

Sam flips him off and steps exaggeratedly over the line of salt Dean's poured. It's crooked, he decides moodily.

Dad's still standing by the window, glaring at the entire world, but now he's got Abby at his side and she's glaring too. It's quieter on her now, less pissed and more contemplative, but, still. They look like a matching set.

She looks a lot like Mom, Sam thinks.

There's nothing in the room for him to stand on and even he's not tall enough to be able to reach the ceiling without using something. He stands in the middle of the room and presses his lips together before he glances down at the floor. There's enough debris down there to hide a devil's trap if he really has to, but he likes them on the ceiling.

Aside from the whole tradition of it working for them (and Sam is enough of a hunter to admit that superstitious luck objects are alright by him), there's also the fact that most things don't look _up_ when they enter a room. Not unless they've already been hit with this trick once before.

Meg's dead, though. Sam'd killed her himself. And there's no other demons that they've exorcised with a devil's trap, in this lifetime or the last universe. So.

"Dean," Sam calls.

Both Abby and Dad jump a little bit. Abby's holding his chalk, Sam sees, and he smiles at her for it. She turns a little pink in the cheeks and Dad glares a little harder, but Sam's not really paying attention to them. He's trying to remember if he'd seen what he needs in the car somewhere.

"Jesus, Sam, what?" Dean sounds gruff and halfway to pissed. Sam wonders what he and Dad had been talking about to get him there. "I realize I'm a better hunter than you, but can't you leave me alone for five freakin' seconds?"

Sam rolls his eyes. "Do we still have that stool in the back of the Impala?" he asks.

General silence from Dean for a few seconds. They'd stolen that stool a few weeks ago because it'd been haunted and they'd had to do a cleansing ritual on it. Dean had kept it for reasons known only to himself, but if they still had it...

"Yeah, it's in there. Somewhere."

"Great." Sam looks out the window, over Dad's still glaring shoulder, and squints. He can feel the demon closing in like a sinus headache; it's nothing but pressure building. By the time it gets close enough, it'll fell like he's jammed his hand into a socket of some kind, or tried to shove his head through a hole three sizes too small.

She's far enough away, though, that he's got enough time to get out to the car without running the risk of getting himself stuck in a supernatural storm without anyone for backup or anything to use as a weapon. Except himself. And he's usually the last resort because it knocks him on his ass and he _hates_ not being able to watch Dean's back.

"You need help?" Dad asks gruffly when Sam gets back in with the stool.

It's covered in swamp thing goo still, from the last job, so for a second Sam thinks that the smell coming off of it is making him hallucinate. Then he takes in Dad's tense shoulders and the twist to his mouth that means he's saying something he doesn't really want to, and thinks again.

"Uh, sure," he says.

He stands there like an idiot for a few seconds.

"You could, ah, pass me the chalk?" he finally says.

Dad takes it from Abby and hands it over to him.

* * *

They're more than ready for the demon when it comes. Dean feels like a million bucks when he realizes that, standing shoulder to shoulder with Sam and Dad, Gayle behind them. It feels like fixin' one of the mistakes he'd made, like pulling Sam out of that fire without dropping him.

It's downright awesome is what it is.

Less awesome is the fact that that's Mom's face out there, twisting up in hatred and spewing insults. It doesn't even have the decency to drop the charade; she looks just like Mom, acts just like Mom, and Dean can feel Gayle trembling behind him. It's one of the reasons she's back there, behind all of them.

She hadn't seen herself from the outside. Dad had. Dad knew, now, what had to be done with a demon.

"What's the plan?" Dean asks softly. He knows it, for the most part, 'cause he'd helped Sam put it together in a typical, fly by the seat of your pants fashion, but Dad doesn't know and neither does Gayle. They can't keep them in the dark over this.

"Wait," Sam says. His shoulder tense against Dean's and he exhales noisily. "There's another one coming. Maybe two more. Enough."

"We let her through, it's just gonna make a hole the others can get through, huh?" Dean scratches the back of his neck and watches Mom prowl the driveway.

She stops in front of his car and slides her fingers over the hood. Dean can't help the stab of almost physical pain at the thought of a demon fucking with his baby, but he doesn't move. Thing's crazy if it thinks he's gonna go out there for his car. If it'd been Sammy, maybe.

The Impala? Can totally take care of herself.

"John," Mom calls. She sounds like she's coaxing out a confession. Dean clenches his fists and waits. "Johnny, do you know your sons? Do you?"

Dad takes a deep breath on his other side. Sam's a stone, still, reaching with that big brain of his. He murmurs, "Ten minutes out, give or take," to Dean while Dad's exhaling, while Gayle's hand finds the back of Dean's shirt and starts clutching hard enough that he can feel her nails on his skin.

He reaches back and gently squeezes her hand.

"Few more minutes, kiddo," he tells one of them. He doesn't really know who, though Gayle relaxes her death grip a little bit and Sam nods his head.

"Those aren't our boys in there with you, John," Mom says loudly. She comes close to the window for the first time, pressing her face to the opening where the glass should be and smiling. "You know that, don't you? They're something else. Something bad. Why don't you come out here and we'll fix them?"

Dad clenches his fingers and leans forward, far enough that Sam's got one hand hovering behind Dean's back, ready to grab Dad's neck if he tries to go forward anymore. Salt lines are kind of useless if you've stuck your head on the other side of them.

"You're not my wife," Dad says tightly. "You just shut the hell up."

The demon smiles with Mom's mouth. Dean really hates those freakin' things. He tunes out their banter, because he doesn't need to pay attention to it. It always fucks him up, to hear his loved ones talking like that.

Instead, he turns his body into Sam's a little, changing his hold on Gayle's wrist so that it's cradled across her stomach and she comes up to tuck herself hesitantly against his back. She's lucky he's a nice guy.

"How many can you hold?" Dean asks out of the side of his mouth.

Sam's mouth presses into a thin line. "One if you want me focusing on something else; maybe two of them, I think, if I've got someone to exorcise them, but that's going to take me out of the count for anything else."

That's pretty much what Dean had figured. Sam can only ever do those awe-inspiring acts of psychic creepiness when he was pissed. Since he doesn't really have time to prank Sam right now, he figures he's gonna have to find a way to distract two demons enough that one of 'em'll walk itself into the devil's trap.

While keeping them away from Gayle and Dad, who don't have the slightest clue about what to do with demons. Fun times.

Gayle takes a noisy breath behind him, reminding him of her presence and Dean grimaces. "Don't suppose you have a force field you can put around a couple people, do you?" he asks Sam hopefully. Man, that would be so cool if he did.

"I'm not the Green Lantern, Dean," Sam says softly. He touches the bridge of his nose with two fingers and winces. "Less than five minutes."

"Dad," Dean calls. "Give us a few seconds, then break that salt line, alright?" Dad mumbles something to them, pretty much still fixated on Mom, so Dean turns to Sam and looks at him.

His brother looks like he's ready for the war they never really had that first time around. That'd been more like a massacre. And Dean wouldn't really call this a war, because three demons? Come on, piece of cake. Still.

"Get her into the hallway." With the devil's trap, went unsaid. Anything weird went down, Dean wanted her behind a devil's trap and surrounded by salt. He hadn't made that box back there for nothin'.

Sam gives him a flat look, worried little brother at his best. "Dude, don't do anything stupid," he says with an eye roll.

Dean hands him a shotgun and grins. "Do I ever do anything stupid, Sammy? That's your gig, man."

Gayle looks at him when Sam pulls on her arm. Dean just looks at her right back, not really ready to deal with the tears he can see starting to come up in her eyes, and gently pries her fingers out of his. You'll be all right, he tries to send to her. We've got you.

Sam tucks her under his arm when Dean gets her to let go and looks out the window. There's a strain growing around his eyes; Dean doesn't ask how far out they are right now and he doesn't ask how many there are. He can see Sam's fingers tapping out an uneven, three beat rhythm against his thigh.

Gayle tangles her fingers in the hem of Sam's shirt and lets him lead her away. Dean's struck with something weird before he turns to watch Dad and Mom face off over a line of salt.

She's Sam's little sister too.

He hadn't realized that before now.

* * *

Dean had told him to wait a few seconds. John stretches it out to about thirty, mainly because he can't look away from the way the demon inside her is twisting Mary's pretty face into expressions he'd never even known his wife was capable of making.

Then Dean's at his elbow, shotgun primed, and his son swipes his hand through the line of salt like it's nothing. Like he hadn't taken the time to explain to both John and Abby how much evil salt could keep away if only people knew how to use it.

"Thank you, Dean," Mary says, politely, and both he and Dean are flying back like they weigh nothin' at all.

John hits the ground rolling, memories of a lifetime telling him how to tuck just so to make sure he doesn't kill the holy hell out of his shoulder. He manages to twist enough that he lands more or less primed to get back to his feet and face the demon.

Dean lands a few feet from him, damn near flat on his back, but he bounces up within a second and throws a nasty grin his mother's way. "Really friggin' hate that," he mutters.

"Yeah, me too." That's Sam's voice, only not. John had thought it'd gone tight and pissed a few days ago dealing with Abby, but, no, that had just been this tone's weaker cousin. Sam sounds like he's going to rip Mary to shreds.

John's gotta stop himself from putting his body between Sam's and Mary's; Sam's on his side, for one, and for another, he doesn't want to take another flyin' leap at the ground if he doesn't have to. He's not real sure which one of them would send him flying, but he's damned certain that either way he wouldn't stand in the way for long.

"You never got your skull cracked open, Sam," Dean snarks back at him. He's pretty much ignoring the demon, John realizes, and that's just fine, because she's walking towards them now. John purposely does _not_ glance at the ceiling, where the lines of Sam's trap are stark and multi-colored in chalk.

"Had to deal with the afterwards of you, though," Sam says. He moves with Mary, almost snakelike, weaving a little to keep himself between her and the hallway he'd just come out of. John doesn't need to be told that's where they've stashed Abby for this.

"I wasn't around for that particular triumph," Mary says, and her eyes bleed to black. "That must have been something. Heard that you had to hold your brother's brains in, Winchester. I was surprised, to tell you the truth. Didn't think he actually had any."

"Hey!" Dean says, affronted.

"Yeah, well," Sam says softly, "I made sure to pay your dad back for that, didn't I?" He twists, pulls an arm up to his face and makes a show of looking at his wrist. "He says hi, by the way. Whatever's left of him."

Mary's face transforms into a look of such absolute _hate_ that John takes an unknowing step backwards, away from it. He clutches the bottle of water Dean had handed him an hour ago and tries to make it seem like he's even more panicked than he is. One more step, two maybe, and Mary'd be in the devil's trap. They need to get her in there.

When she turns to look more towards Sam, John's stomach plummets a little bit. They hadn't really planned for that.

Dean sees it too. "Sammy, stop baiting the demon," Dean says sweetly, then, "Sweetcheeks, are you really gonna go after my geek brother when I'm over here? Which one of us you think you've got to worry about, huh?"

"Oh, definitely him," Mary says easily. She nods her head at Sam, but takes a step towards Dean. "Thing is, I want him to suffer, so I think we'll start with you, huh?"

She tilts her head, birdlike, the same mannerisms John'd seen in Abby, and says, "Or maybe Johnny. I can call you Johnny, right John? You let me do it all the time, especially when we're—"

"You shut your mouth," John grits out before she can finish that sentence. He doesn't know whether he's mortified at the thought of his son and his whatever (it hadn't escaped his notice that this demon had called Sam "Winchester" again or that it'd referred to Sam and Dean as brothers) or if he's horrified at the knowledge that this demon, this thing, has access to Mary's memories.

"Keep it together," Dean murmurs out of the side of his mouth. He takes a grudging step backwards, away from Mary and Sam both, and that's when Mary smiles and crosses the line into the devil's trap.

She knows it's there almost instantaneously. Her head whips up and back, staring, before it turns to pin Sam with a furious, grimace. "Should have known," she says.

"Demons aren't real up there in the brains department," Dean says back at her.

Sam's just watching. His eyebrows have gone together, to the point where the furrow between them is almost white with tension. "Incoming," he says softly.

Dean makes a noise of acknowledgement and asks, "She good in there?"

Mary smiles at them all. "Yeah, Sammy, am I being a good girl in here?"

"Keep the other demons away from the trap and she can't get out," Sam says. Half of his mouth curls into a little smile when he leans in to look Mary in the face. "You're not as strong as Meg, are you? That's why you weren't there that day."

"Daddy didn't want her, huh?" Dean asks. It's a rhetorical question, because he's already moving away from the devil's trap and towards where the salt line's been broken.

"Just like Daddy never wanted you, huh, Dean?" Mary asks. She smiles her gentle smile and props up one arm on the other, hand resting against her chin.

"Not gonna work this time, sweetheart," Dean says right back. "Gotten kind of sick of demons trying that line on me, you know?"

"They're here," Sam says.

All hell breaks loose.

* * *

Sam's been keeping an eye (ear? brain?) out for the rest of the demons. Two of them, he thinks suddenly, there's only two more coming and they're almost here. He hates that he can tap into the "kill kill Winchesters, we'll kill you, fate will be whispered to children in the dark," but sometimes it's really, really useful.

"Dad, can you go keep an eye on Abby?" he asks. "You've got holy water in case anything gets past us, right?"

It feels weird asking Dad to play the non-role in this little unfolding drama, but this Dad doesn't know enough about what's out there to be any kind of help. For all Sam knows, the humans the incoming demons are wearing are psychics who can fry your brains. He can't keep Dean and Dad safe and he doesn't want to choose which one he has to keep an eye on.

Dean would hate being alive because Sam thinks he's more important than Dad. Even thinking it himself, Sam feels like a disgusting human.

Dad's staring at him and Dean is too, the expression on his face clearly saying he's ten different kind so of stupid and not a one of them good. Sam replays what he's just said, finds the problem, and mutters, "Oops. Fuck," out loud. Figures.

"Let's ignore that for right now, huh?" Dean says.

Behind them all, the demon in Mom chuckles and crosses her arms with a swish of cloth. "Oh, have they got a story to tell you, Johnny. It'll be fun. Like being gouged with a rusty spoon."

Sam ignores her without really trying. She's just a nuisance now, not strong enough to break free of the devil's trap without help, and she's trying to distract them.

Won't work, because he can feel the exact instant one of the other demon's sets foot within two feet of the Impala. She's a part of Dean, has been for as long as Sam can remember, and it's not all that weird to get a spike of weirdly felt alarm shrilling across his nerves.

"Hey," he says, just the once. Dean comes up at his back, cocking the shotgun and Dad looks at them both like he can't understand them.

A head pokes through where the salt lines been disrupted. The host's dead, Sam knows immediately, has been for a few days at least, and that means he can let a breath out. He doesn't know if he can kill a demon while it's in someone without killing the person too. He's never really tried.

He managed it on himself, but that was because he was pissed and he had to make sure the demon _paid_ for what it had done to his family. He's not sure he can be that angry again. He doesn't want to be. He may not have a demon whispering to him that he's going to turn this time around, but that doesn't mean he's not keenly aware of the fact that with his powers, he's already treading dangerous water and looks like a feast to pretty much any evil thing that's out there.

"I can do this one," Sam says softly to Dean, out of the corner of his mouth. Dad's still standing there, not moving, because he can't take orders or thinly veiled requests any better than Sam himself can. He hadn't seen what Sam had done to the last demon and Sam really doesn't want him seeing it this time either.

But what he wants and what actually happens are a lot of the time two totally separate things. He hadn't wanted to leave Dean. He hadn't wanted to be the last Winchester standing. And he hadn't wanted anything demonic anywhere near his family.

The minute the thing clears the window sill, Sam's smiling at it, moving forward to draw its attention. It has enough sense of mind to make a suspicious, almost terrified face, and then Sam's locking it into that body like he's got a key for it.

"Come and get me," he tells it.

Dean makes a snorting sound behind him and mutters something that sounds suspiciously like, "No more bad action movies for you, dude."

Sam doesn't point out that _Dean's_ the one who insists on watching those stupid movies anyway. Sam likes to watch the documentaries or the news, and, contrary to Dean's insistence, _Congo, Pitch Black,_ and Sci-Fi originals don't count as documentaries.

The demon hisses at him. Flat out hisses at him. Sam kind of raises his eyebrows and _pulls_ , making the demon skid out of the way so that the next one has to come out of the same hole. It comes at him snarling and pushing, trying to shove him.

He smacks its resistance back without even breaking a sweat and looks at his brother and father. Dean's posed with the holy water, grinning like he's about to win the lottery. Dad's watching him, flicking his eyes between where Mom's still smiling and him, him and Dean. He looks like he wants to say something and doesn't.

Sam's mouth twitches at him, but he turns back to his demon inhabited corpse. His head's starting to pound and the other demon's checking the rest of the house for weaknesses. He needs to get rid of this one. Now.

* * *

The next demon that comes through is live, Dean knows. Mostly, he just knows it because Sam gets that pained, dark look in his eyes that always happens when he looks at people that are possessed. Dean wishes, sometimes, that this life had been his little brother's first, that the worst thing that ever happened to him was his foster father hauling off and hitting him in the face.

Then he reminds himself that he's going to go find the guy who smacked his brother and kill him. Dead.

"Hey, you son of a bitch," Dean says cheerfully when the demon peeks over the edge of the window. He grins at it and tosses most of the holy water in his water bottle into its face.

"Shit," Sam suddenly hisses, and Dean's shoved away from the window before he can really process that. It takes a half-beat to realize that shove had been from Sam and another to realize that, hey, that demon? Hadn't flinched away from the holy water Dean'd thrown into its (her? Dean honestly can't tell. Whatever it is, it's fugly) face.

In fact, the damn thing was grinning at him.

"Shit, shit, shit," Sam hisses out some more. He manages not to make Dean careen into the wall, which, honestly, makes Dean all sorts of happy. At least before he remembers the last time they couldn't use holy water on a demon without it just laughing it off.

Jesus.

The demon smiles at them. Sam'd somehow managed to get Dad at the same time as Dean had gone for his little flight, so Dad is at his shoulder all of a sudden, watching the demon advance on all three of them.

Sam's little dead weight demon is pinned to the wall in such a way that it reminds him uncomfortably of spewing his own blood out of every pore in his body. Combine that with the demon smiling in a distinctly familiar way and Dean is very, very, very not happy.

"Fuck," he mutters succinctly.

"I can… maybe hold that one. But not at the same time as this one," Sam says. He nods to each of them, the demon starting to circle around them and the one he's got against the wall.

"Not enough time to do an exorcism," Dean mutters back, and that's when the other demon smiles.

"Well," it says, "I think if you've got a hostage," it motions to Mom, prowling the devil's trap now like some kind of caged carnivore, "I should have one too.

"What'd you think? John or…" it grins and crooks one finger.

Dean starts sliding along the floor. He digs his heels into the ground with a grimace, freakin' _pissed_ that they always go after him when they want something against Sam, and then out of the corner of his eye he sees Dad start to scoot forward too. Well, it's good to know that they don't really pick and choose. Winchester seems to be good enough for them.

Sam's power slams against his chest, holding him in place. It does the same to Dad a second later because Dean hears the sudden intake of breath, surprised and freaked out. Dean's sort of use to it now, and Sam manages to be a hell of a lot more careful than most of the things that have moved Dean via their brains. Or demonic powers.

"How many you think you can hold, Sammy?" the demon asks. It tilts its head in the same motion as the other demons have been using, hell, the same motion he can remember from freakin' Meg, and Dean knows nothin' good is going to come from this.

Dean gets that sinking feeling just as he hears a feminine shriek from the next room and they've forgotten about Gayle, fuck.

She's screaming at the top of her lungs, trying to brace herself even though she's terrified. Dean jerks towards her only to be stopped by freakin' Sam and his freak of nature powers, and then Gayle's slide is stopped so suddenly her arms jerk like a marionette's.

Sam, he knows from experience, tends to just grab the body part with the most weight behind it. He just sort of… grabs the heaviest part of you to stop whatever you're doing. Makes it really damn uncomfortable, but whenever Sam's reduced to giving himself a migraine, Dean's usually not going to complain about a rough grab.

It takes a second for him to realize that Sam's hit his limit on the amount of people he can keep in place. The only reason he figures this out is because the demon, the low level one that'd been so easy it had made him snicker, well, it's now peeling itself away from the wall and approaching them with a nasty little smile.

"So, Winchesters," the strong demon purrs. It steps forward, puts its face near Sam's and smiles. "I think this means you're out gunned. Again. Who dies this time, Sam?"

Dean feels the little, testing pull even through the death grip that Sam's got on his ribcage. He wants to tap Sam's hand and tell him to lighten up on the goddamn pressure, but it's not any part of Sam that Dean can feel that's holding him up right now.

Gayle inches forward a half step or two while Sam's busy keeping him in place. Dean feels the grip loosen when his attention turn towards her instead of him. This shit? Is not gonna last.

He may not be great at his exorcisms, but he's not too terrible either. Sam's too damn busy making sure the demon's don't get a hold of any of them and Dad's _useless_ at hunting now, which he'd never though he'd have to say. What he remembers is gonna have to be good enough.

Mom's the closest demon. That's who he turns his eyes on.

"Exorcizamus te," Dean begins. And then he gets fucking stuck. Mom smiles sweetly at him while the piddly lapdog of a demon laughs like nails on a chalkboard.

"Omnis immundus spiritus," Sam supplies helpfully through his teeth. Dean doesn't look at him, but he knows his face has gone white, that he's probably shaking and about ten minutes away from throwing up ala Linda Blair. Not a pretty sight.

That doesn't mean he remembers enough of the goddamn exorcism to be worthwhile.

He pulls a face (about the only body part he can use without having to battle Sam for control of it first), and purses his mouth.

"Change of plans," he tells Sam. He strains a little against Sam's power, pushing, until Sam relents that slightest bit and the demon closes in on him while Mom licks her lips and watches. He's got some holy water. Let 'em. "You do the exorcism. I keep them busy."

Sam grunts, but it's Dad that says, "Don't you think he's bein' a _little bit more useful doing this_?"

Dad sounds pissed off and helpless, exactly like he knows Dad hates being, so Dean's willing to cut him a little bit of slack. He doesn't know the goddamn ritual by heart like Sam does and he doesn't have the nifty power of roasting demons even if he did.

They were just gonna have to take care of themselves while Sam takes care of the over powered demon.

"Sammy, Sammy, Sammy," the demon says. It tugs on one of them, Dean's not too sure who, but both Gayle and Dad make noises so it might be both. He's glad it's given up on him for the time being.

He keeps his eye on the other demon, who's circling around the edges of the devil's trap with an intense look on its face. Sam hadn't been too worried about it on its own, but, fuck, he does not want to add a third demon to the mix. Just the one up in Sam's personal space is enough for him.

Big kahuna demon tuts at Sam again for a few seconds before it switches places with the lesser demon hovering around Mom. Dean? Does not like the looks of this. He tries to catch Sam's eye, succeeds, and then proceeds to try to outline a twelve step plan that includes, but is not limited to, finding a magical demon killing knife somewhere in the wreckage of the house.

Not happening, Sam's face says right back to him, but his eyebrows rise out of their scowl for a half-beat and that's what Sam was looking for.

"Wait for it," Dad says softly, like he's got any idea what's about to go down. Even back then, Dad usually couldn't figure out the shorthand between him and Sam. It's theirs, always has been, always would be.

The little demon that's right up in Sam's face leans in farther and almost touches him.

Dean tunes out Dad's (fairly good, he admits privately) point in favor of wrenching his arm free of Sam's gentle (relatively speaking) grip to throw holy water on the fucker. Dribble it, actually, since he's using a water bottle with one of those little suck on lids and he hadn't taken the damn cap off before they'd been spectacularly screwed to hell.

Sam rears back as soon as Dean's got the other demon firmly fixated on him and Dean feels more than registers the fact that Sam's just retracted all of his power from them and is instead using it to whip out at the demon who's starting to crack the devil's circle open like an egg.

"Ah-ah," the demon says. It turns to look at Sam, just braces itself against all the power Sam's heaving at it, and its] feet don't so much as move when Sam _visibly_ pushes the thing with something that looks a little like a shimmering heat wave.

Dean stops paying attention to that. He's trusted Sam to watch his back for years and he's got other people to think about. Namely, Dad and Gayle.

Gayle, smart girl, is already trying to head back to where the devil's trap is inlaid in the ground. Little fucker over here isn't strong enough for the whole toss you around without touching you shit; Gayle'd be safe behind the trap.

Dad, slightly less smart, or otherwise just of the opinion that he shouldn't leave his wife with a demon and somebody who can give a demon a run for their money, drops to the floor and starts scrounging around for the book Dean'd dropped earlier. He'd brought an exorcism. He just hadn't really thought to hang onto it when he had Sam to do it for him.

Teach him to think that, now wouldn't it?

The demon in front of him smiles with his eyes gone black and evil, head cocked to the side. "What are you going to do without your brother, Winchester? No exorcism, no baby brother to save your ass. Options?"

He draws his lips back from his teeth a bit, forces something that might look like a smile if somebody was being nice. Mostly, he figures it's one of those looks that Sam always elbows him for after the fact and whispers that he looks like he's ten seconds away from asking for people's babies.

If Sam can keep the strong one occupied for a few seconds, Dean can pin this one down, no problem.

Dean slides between his sister's rapidly retreating back and the demon, putting his back firmly to Gayle, and smiles. "Come on, fugly," he taunts, "Let's see what you got, huh?"

The demon screams like an eight year old girl faced with boy cooties when Dean calmly squirts it in the face with his water bottle. Idiot. He drops the bottle when it's empty, scoops up the shotgun Dad's sliding his way up without breaking the gaze he's got on the demon, and lets it have a face-full of rock salt with his shotgun

Sam'd implied that he wouldn't feel bad burning this one up without exorcising it, Dean reminds himself when the face kind of… melts into itself for a few seconds before the demon pulls it back together, making the flesh stick like it's Playdoh. The person was already dead. All Dean's doing is adding a little aggravation under its skin in the form of rocksalt under the flesh.

The demon howls, scratching at its face even as it pulls itself together again, digging its nails in to try to tear out the rocksalt souvenirs Dean's left in there. It's not gonna be much of a problem for a least a few seconds, so he lets his eyes dart over to Dad, who's got the exorcism book open on his lap, the rock salt bag by his legs.

"You read that?" Dean asks quickly. He cuts his eyes back to his demon, finds it still digging, and looks over at Sam real quick.

Sam's looking even more strained than he already was, like he's just gone ten rounds with one of his monster headaches and lost. Dean keeps a careful eye on that wreck waiting to happen and listens as Dad, faltering, starts to speak the familiar Latin.

His pronunciation is off, which Dean can recognize after years and years of hearing that language in his head and spoken by his brother and Pastor Jim, but it'll do the job.

The demon makes a noise of startled hatred, and pries a chunk of rock salt out of one of its eyes.

Dean's not paying attention to it. He tilts his head to the side, looking over his shoulder, and meets Gayle's gaze. She's not where she's supposed to be and Dean's gonna rip her a new one for it, right after she stops looking like she's gonna burst into tears.

As soon as she sees him looking at her, she stumbles across the room to attach herself to him.

He's not paying attention, which is his first mistake. His second is that he's got Gayle tucked up against his side and he hadn't pushed her away and reminded her that they were on a hunt, there wasn't time for this mushy stuff yet (the same way he hadn't ever done with Sammy and he doesn't have the scars to prove it anymore, but he did once).

"Dean!" Sam shouts, warningly. Too bad it comes just a little too freakin' late to really help.

The demon Sam's been distracting, exorcising, is suddenly right up in Dean's face instead, smiling at him as it says, "Bye, Winchesters," and the ground peels open under him, floorboards disappearing from under his feet.

Fuck, he thinks. Fuck fuck fuck. He shoves at Gayle, trying to get her out of the way, but then whatever little bit of solid had been under his feet is suddenly not there anymore and he's falling. He can't catch himself and the floor's _still_ opening up beneath him, creaking and protesting and fuck fuck fuck. He's got a second to see Sam's white face, to feel _something_ of Sam's attempt to catch him, and then he's falling backwards.

Whoops, Dean thinks, stupidly. Sorry, Sammy.

* * *

John's too far away to catch his son as he falls, but he can grab Abby's hand and keep her from plunging in afterwards.

"Daddy," she whimpers, her hand sweat-slicked and slippery, too slippery, oh, God, he's gonna lose her down that hole and how far down did it go? Would Dean still be alive or would he be a broken body at the bottom, would he still have a family when all this was over or would he only have a boy he doesn't know and the empty, demon-filled shell of a wife?

"I'm slippin'!"

"Gotcha girl," John mutters under his breath, clamping his other hand around her bicep.

She's not heavy, but John's got no grip, no traction at all, and she's so damn slippery.

Behind him, something goes off with the force of a miniature sun.

* * *

Dean. Dean Dean Dean Dean Dean Dean Dean.

Sam snaps. Again. One second the innocent people the demons are inhabiting are alive, safe in their heads while Sam stutters over the exorcism, the next they're just flash fried, melted together with the demons he's vaporized.

He keeps enough of himself to make sure Mom's still alive, to just _draw_ the demon out of her with a flicker of intent and shove it into the devil's trap he's drawn on the ceiling, the one designed to hold as much power as a demon can generate and ask for more.

Then he lunges towards the hole in the floor, bypassing Dad holding Abby up, and throws himself down without a second thought.

Dean, Dean, Dean.

He catches Abby, absently, on reflex, as Dad's grip falters and she starts to fall, doesn't even think about it. Dean, Dean. She floats, comes to within a few inches of the ground and his power flexes, lets her go without so much as an afterthought, because all of it's taken up with making sure he's not alone again, last Winchester standing, triumphant on a battlefield of blood.

There's no jinniyah this time, though Sam can probably find one if he needs to. Moving heaven and hell's not that hard when you have as much untapped power singing at your fingertips as he does right now, and it's all concentrated on Dean.

Dean's lying on his stomach, no obvious breaks, pool of blood just starting to form around his head. There's a high-pitched noise in the back of his head, one that sounds like a child screaming about how the temple is a fragile place to get hit and how many head injuries has Dean had this time, how many times has he almost died, oh, God, leave his brains in, please please please.

The gibbering sound in his head is replaced by the sickening knowledge that he knows just what Dean's head sounds like as it cracks open and knows what texture his brother's brains are. Please, he thinks disjointedly. Please, no.

This is the second time he couldn't save his brother. The second time. It's not going to happen again.

"Dean?" somebody says, voice too thin, too high, and Sam's so lost in his own head that he doesn't realize it's gotten too close until his sight of Dean's blocked off by blonde hair that's shining even down here.

Not Mom, he reminds himself, and then, Dean.

"Please be alright, please, I'm sorry," the girl mutters hysterically. Sam pays less than half a mind to her, feeling out, reaching, praying, and, yes, there's a heartbeat and there's nothing sliding out of Dean's head to wet his palms or make his power sing in fear.

Sam doesn't sigh, because he can feel something broken in there somewhere, not in Dean's head but in his body, but he does let some of the _anger_ go. The demon inside him, not quite there and not quite gone, mumbles, tries to catch parts of it, and Sam tells it nastily that he just fried its family. It subsides.

The girl (Abby, he recognizes now, just Abby) is still babbling apologies at Dean.

He pushes her aside, just gentle enough not to make her ram into the far wall. "Dean," he says, just once, and sits back on his heels to wait. Dean's never failed to come back to him when he asks, when he just says _please_ , and Sam's abilities are moving down here, slicking through the air like something alive, and he doesn't, he can't…

Abby creeps up beside him, suddenly small and silent, and Sam lifts one arm up for her, not really paying that much attention to her. Dean's breathing. Dean needs to wake up so Sam can stop feeling like he's going to bleed power all over the place.

She doesn't touch him immediately. Sam doesn't care, goes to drop his arm because he could be using it to make sure Dean's alright instead of keeping it in the air, using his telekinesis to do a quick rubdown of his brother's arms and legs. At the last second, she pushes her head under his arm and breathes in this little shuddering breath that sounds exactly like Sam's head feels.

Abby's hair is soft against his neck.

His powers always, always go haywire when Dean's in trouble, let him do things he normally wouldn't be able to do, so he's not really surprised when he murmurs, "Wake up," and Dean's eyes snap open.

He doesn't even think about Andy until much, much later.

Dean's looking at him. His eyes are hazy and not really there, unfocused, but he smiles when he sees Sam's shadow. "Dude," Dean says fuzzily, "You're glowin'. S'cool"

He is? Sam looks down at his palm, resting on Dean's chest, and then the arm he's got around Abby. Her hesitation makes a little more sense now, because, yeah, he really is glowing in the dim basement room, lit up like he's a firefly.

He'll be freaked out about it later. When Dean's sitting in bed and calling him Firefly or Glow Torch.

Dean's head is in one piece. Relatively speaking. He's never really sure if Dean's heads altogether put on right and he's babbling to himself, but Dean's eyes are open and there's three other Winchesters that Sam can feel, alive and breathing and that's just.

If his eyes tear up, he's pretty sure Dean's too out of it to see that closely.

A different voice cuts through his thoughts before they can go even more hysterical than they already are. "Sam?" Dad asks. Abby twitches against his side and Sam's afraid for a second he's going to have to use one of his arms to shove his face up because there's no way he's looking away from Dean right now.

Then Dean closes his eyes and smiles a little, fingers twitching in a shooing motion, and Sam finds he can look up. Dad's head is poking down into the hole in the floor and his face is _white_. "The demons are…" he says as soon as he sees Sam watching him.

"Gone," Sam supplies. He clears his throat after he says it, because he sounds dangerous, threatening, and that hadn't really been his intention. "Mom's alright?"

"She's…" Dad trails off, rubs a hand across his face and looks to the left a little. "She says she's going to be fine. She doesn't remember anything."

Sam knows how that goes. She'll start remembering at night, in her dreams, screaming and begging and the demon taunting her throughout it all. He'd had Dean to get him through that. She has Dad. She'll be fine.

He lifts his arm up from around Abby and uses his newly freed hand to pinch the bridge of his nose. His other hand he keeps on Dean's chest. He's surprised Dean's not demanding to know what happened, but hell, if he's got a concussion (which Sam's reasonably sure he does and it's not brains leaking out, it's not), he's not going to remember anything for a few minutes anyway.

On cue, Dean stirs a little and says, "We get 'em?"

"Yeah," Sam tells him, "We got them."

"Kay."

There's half a beat of silence, just waiting, where Abby shuffles a little closer to Sam and Sam feels guilty for pulling his arm back. Then Dean opens his eyes again and squints. "You're glowin'," he says.

"I know."

The headache? Is coming on like a freight train. Sam pinches his head harder and tries not to faint, cry, or do anything else that Dean will be forced to make fun of him for the rest of his life.

He's not really sure if he wins that battle.

* * *

Dean's kind of really pissed that he doesn't remember anything about that night. No, seriously, anything. Yeah, he kind of has this vague memory of Sam glowing like one of those five dollar Christmas cards by that man everyone hates, but that's about it.

It's not fair, is what it is, because Sam tells him he sort of made up with his sister and Dad keeps looking at him like he said something really, really stupid.

Damnit.

On the other hand, he does wake up in the backseat with _Mom_ sitting next to him, so he's not really sure that should be a problem. He looks at her for a few seconds and his head freakin' hurts (which means he's relatively sure he'd taken a header into something. Again. He's got to look into wearing a helmet when he goes hunting), but she's there and she's alive, and he can see Sam's gigantic, poufy head in the seat in front of him, driving his baby, so.

Not that bad. Maybe.

"We get them?" he asks as soon as he registers he's awake.

He's expecting Sam to answer, or maybe even Dad, but Mom's the one who reaches out to rest one hand against his face and smile.

"We got them, sweetie," she says, then, "Yes, your brother was glowing."

Huh?

"Concussion," Sam says from the front seat, like he knows that Dean's two seconds away from Christo-ing Mom. Again.

Oh. Concussion would explain the headache and the reason he's in the backseat and not driving his car. "Okay," Dean says slowly, "What happened?"

"Go back to sleep, Dean," Gayle says from his other side.

He hadn't even noticed her. Weird. "Sam?" What the hell had happened?

"You remember the demons?" Sam asks.

Kid sounds dead tired, about two seconds away from passing out on the nearest person or thing, and Dean's got kind of an idea of how it'd gone down if his head was killing him and Sam sounded like he'd gone ten rounds with a poltergeist that had a love of choking. So, like a normal hunt.

"Yeah," Dean says. A little. Maybe. He remembers that Mom was possessed by a demon, and even if he didn't the way she's shrinking a little bit would be a dead give away.

"I took care of it," Sam says simply.

Yeah, kind of no doubt how that one went down. "Thought you weren't a superhero, Sammy. How'd you manage to take down more than one demon?"

Sam doesn't say anything for a long time. Then, "I was pissed."

"Remind me not to piss you off," Dean says lightly.

Mom makes a noise of agreement on his side. Dad, who Dean assumes is riding shotgun, hasn't made a sound during the entire conversation, which means he's going to be in for an earful when he's actually, you know, awake and functioning. Which is an incentive not to be awake any more.

The Impala is cushy and squishy and he's lying out of his ass when he says that, but she's home. He tucks his face into the seat, leans to the side a little when Mom tugs at him, but then he's pretty much ready to get back to sleep.

Sam shifts in the front seat, probably checking his watch to make sure he can wake Dean up in an hour, the fucker.

Note to self: do not piss off the little brother anytime soon. Soon being within the next few hours, until said little brother crashes on the couch, bed, Impala, or other nearby surface he can reach.

He spends a good five minutes thinking he's already asleep, because no way is the car telling him stories, showing him little film reels of when he and Sam were little and Sam was obnoxious enough that Dean threatened to throw him out an open window more than once. For one thing, this is the wrong car, no matter how he claims to love them just the same.

Then Gayle starts talking, softly, next to his ear, just nonsense noise to pass the time and Dean's forced to admit that, hey, maybe he's not really asleep after all.

This? Has got to be Sam's doing. He's going to kill him if he's made his car _psychic_ or some shit now. Kill him.

He's out like a light when whatever it is suddenly starts relaying pictures (Sam's memories? Whatever) of days and days spent driving, sun in his face and a warm brother in the seat next to him. The music's just right, none of that sissy talk show stuff Dad's listening to right now, and Dean falls asleep smiling.

* * *

Two days after everything; after he's held Mary in his arms and listened to her cry; after Dean woke up and finally stopped asking if they'd killed the demons; after Sam had managed to get from the guest room to Dean's room after collapsing on the stairs, after all that; that's when John asks his questions.

"Who are you?" is his first question and this time, John's pretty sure Sam's not going to lie.

"Sam Winchester," Sam says, and yeah, John had been expecting that for a few days now, but it still feels like a punch in the gut. He can't. He doesn't know how this kid could be his and he doesn't know how he could be Mary's but he is.

"How?" Mary blurts.

Sam rubs his thumb across one of his eyebrows and looks at Dean.

"Your show, man," Dean says. He props his boots up on the coffee table, then cringes and drops them when Mary raises her eyebrows. "You're the one who made that stupid frickin' wish in the first place."

"Wish?" Mary asks gently.

Sam's giving Dean a dirty look when she says it, but he promptly stops so that he can look over at John's wife. There's a look of almost uncertain adoration in his eyes and John'd be a little more concerned about that if he couldn't pick out traces of Mary's features in the boy's face.

"I… made a wish," Sam finally says.

"He made a fucker of a wish," Dean adds helpfully.

"Language," Mary reminds him before she turns back to Sam and says, "Go on, Sammy."

Sam blushes and ducks his head, peeks up at her through his bangs. "I wished that you hadn't ever died," he says, softly.

John's entire body freezes down cold. "The demon," he asks, blurts out, because he can't think of anything else that would have killed her and maybe that would explain how Sam knew where she was and…

Dean's shaking his head. "Not that demon. Different one. We call him Bob," he adds with a sly grin, shooting a look over to Sam. Sam, for his part, just rolls his eyes and sighs. "Yellow-Eyed son of a bitch killed everyone."

"Including Dean," Sam says.

Over the next five hours, Sam (with Dean's help), proceeds to tell them exactly how him "making a wish" would result in him being a Winchester.


End file.
